


A Firm Hand

by Ellipsical



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Bearded John Watson, Blow Jobs, Communication, Confessions, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Enthusiastic Consent, Everything is consensual, Exhibitionism, Fingerfucking, Hand Jobs, Intergluteal Sex, John Watson: CEO, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Mile High Club, Misunderstandings, Mutual Masturbation, No big age difference/no underage/consenting adults and all that jazz, Office Blow Jobs, Office Sex, Praise Kink, Prostate Milking, Public Blow Jobs, Rimming, Role Reversal, Smut resumes, Some Plot, Spanking, Submission, Talking about FEEEEELLLLIIINNNNGGSSSS, Vulnerability, We now interrupt your previously scheduled smut to introduce, consent kink, fantasies, role play, safe words, well that was quick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-06-16 01:34:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15426159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: I asked for prompts on Tumblr while tipsy in a hotel in Japan and this happened. I *might* have incorporated the prompt Make Me into that Daddy kink fic I was definitely *not* writing for my own personal purposes. So, here you go. Thank you to my prompter! I hope this does the trick. There might be more eventually, but I've got no plans right now.Head's up: I have no experience of the Daddy scene in the UK, or anywhere for that matter, so take all of this with a grain of salt. For the sake of the story: it's just a private ring of young men who know certain gentleman of this persuasion and who travel in the same social circles as a result. If you have information that might be helpful or a correction please let me know!





	1. Chapter 1

It had been going on for months.

Dr. John Watson, newly turned 35 and recently minted as CEO of Watson Technology, a med tech corporation based in London, after the death of his father, had recently hired the son of an old family friend to be his new personal assistant. The boy had spiralled out of control, according to his parents, and needed a firm hand to guide him. John, who had heard the name Sherlock Holmes crop up in other circles, had an inkling as to why.

The boy, Sherlock, twenty-eight and a graduate school drop out, had so far lived up to expectations. Arriving late and disappearing whenever he pleased. He was cold and recalcitrant and said whatever he was thinking, which was oftentimes so truthful as to be cruel. He only completed tasks if he deemed them interesting. Although he was obviously brilliant, with a razor edge intelligence and quick reflexes, he proved himself time and time again useless to John in every respect.

And yet there was one quality that made John keep him on. One quality that peeked out every now and then and showed John Sherlock's possibility.

His heart.

But he was devastatingly insecure. Despite the bravado and the icy demeanour and the towering intellect, the boy had no idea where his worth lay or how to make it work to his advantage. And within the society that John and Sherlock travelled in that meant that he might be looking for something, or someone, to take control. From all that John had heard, Moriarty had been the person least qualified for that job.

What John Watson wouldn’t give to have Sherlock under his care. Boys like Sherlock were John Watson’s specialty. Him swanning about in his tight trousers and his tighter shirts with his creamy skin and his pristine head of glossy curls and that plump pink indolent mouth. His heart on his sleeve, protected only by an acid tongue and an affectation of sociopathy. John would love to lavish attention and praise on him. Give him gifts, take him out, treat him well. Would love to show him the measure of his worth. And God. What John Watson wouldn’t love to take whatever the boy was willing to give. The way that soft luxe milk-white skin would pink up under John’s touch. The way those long slim thighs would tremble under the bristles of John’s beard. The way that deep chocolatey voice would moan and beg. The way those satiny curls would spill out across a pillow, a desk, the tan leather of his limousine's seats. The unique labyrinthine way his mind worked. The way his incomparable heart beat beneath it all.

John Watson took boys like him and turned them back out into the world, men, ready to make it on their own.

Alas, Sherlock, while being a perfect candidate, wouldn’t yield long enough to actually ask for what he wanted and that, unfortunately, disqualified him from being taken into John’s custody.

After three months of observation, John calls Sherlock into his office one afternoon and, without looking up from the report he was reading, fires him.

Sherlock snorts, unsurprised. When John glances up at him, he merely arches one of his eyebrows and, with a shake of his head, turns to the door, “I knew they were wrong about you.”

John sets down the sheaf of papers on his desk. “Excuse me?”

Sherlock turns back to face him. “Those boys at the club said you were the best. They said you’d be able to handle me. That you took on tough cases.” Pale blue eyes flick over John disdainfully, almost triumphantly, as if he had known this would be the case, and then, _then_ , he has the audacity to smirk. “I had heard Trevor was a right terror before he met you, but you’re obviously not up for the challenge of someone like me. I suppose I’ll just have to keep looking.”

John doesn’t give him the response he was looking for, just levels him with a scathingly bored look. “You are nothing like Trevor.” He gestures to the door with his pen before returning his attention once more to the report before him on the desk. “Please, let Nicole know it’s your last day and she’ll make sure to forward your wages. Good bye, Sherlock.”

A moment later John hears footsteps on the rug and out of the corner of his eye sees Sherlock sit down in the chair on the other side of the desk.

“All right, I’ll bite. What did Trevor have that I don’t?”

“If you don’t know that already, you’re not as smart as you think,” John says, low, and continues reading.

“I’ve an idea, but I’d like to hear you say it.”

John remains silent. Marks the page with a red flourish. The silence settles in the tick of the antique clock on the bookcase against the wall.

“You think I haven’t dealt with your type before?” Sherlock says with a sneer. “My last don was the toughest they breed. I know what you want. You want someone to order about. To whip and spank and call a naughty boy. You want me to make you angry, to disobey. You want me to be bad so that you can teach me how to be good.” He spreads his big hands on the desktop and stands, leaning forward, getting into John’s space. His voice is a low frustrated growl. “I’ve been acting out for weeks now and you’ve barely spoken to me. Barely looked at me.” John stills, doesn’t give up any ground. Lets Sherlock get as close as he dares. Lets him pout and whisper, a hair’s breadth away from John’s mouth, “When will you take me over your knee and teach me my manners, _Daddy_?”

And John, leaning back, out of range, folds his hands in his lap.

“Make me.”

“What?”

“Make me.”

“Make you?”

“Yes.”

Rearing back. Brow wrinkling, chins folding. Confused. “Make you take me over your knee?”

John rubs his fingers over his lips. He watches. Closely. John licks them after, slowly, for good measure. His eyes on John's mouth: hot. “Go on then. Convince me to take you on.”

“Convince you? But how? I’ve been doing everything I know of—“

“I’m not like Moriarty, Sherlock. Yes, I know who you belonged to before.” John would be surprised if all of London hadn’t heard about how _that_ had ended by now, Moriarty not being the most subtle of men. “I’m not one of those daddies the boys at your club go with, Sherlock. I don’t want a toddler who tantrums, who is helpless, who needs their nappies changed. I won’t force you or hurt you. I won’t do anything to you or for you unless it is your express wish. _That_ is the difference between you and Trevor and I’m afraid you’ll never be able to bridge it. Not with how you’ve been behaving these last three months.”

“But—“

“Do you have wishes, Sherlock?”

“Do I. Do I have…?”

“Wishes. Wants. Desires.”

John finds that he thoroughly enjoys him nonplussed. The way he blushes. The way his eyes sharpen and gleam as he picks apart a problem, trying to understand.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“And has anyone ever asked you what they were before?”

Utterly perplexed by what John is saying he shakes his head as if to clear it. Splutters, “That’s not how this works.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No!”

“Well, then, I suppose you best go back to your club and find another then.”

“Wait—“

“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble. Please, like I said, see Nicole on your way out—“

“Wait!”

John looks up at him. He’s leaning forward, balanced on the tips of his fingers, head hung between his shoulders.

“What does it mean?”

“What does what mean, Sherlock?”

He looks up at John, his eyes bright.

“To be yours.”

John swallows hard at those words. How he wants that. Wants that so badly.

But it has to be Sherlock’s choice.

“What do you want it to mean, Sherlock?”

His eyes don’t leave John's and there’s a softness to his gaze that John can see he’s fighting against showing. It’s pure unadulterated vulnerability and John aches to see it. Wants to coax it out. Lay it bare.

His voice cracks just a little as he says, “I want to belong to you.”

“Yes.”

Stronger, “I want to live with you.”

“All right.”

On the edge of imperious, “And I suppose this is rather obvious, but best to be clear: I’d require sex. Lots of it. As much as you’d allow.”

“Require it?” The way he turns red is rather delightful.

“I’d… _desire_ it.”

John wants to reach out and sweep the hair off his brow. Kiss him. Hold him. Ease him. “What else, Sherlock? What else would it mean to be mine?”

“It would just be me and you. No one else.”

“Of course.”

Sharply, “I’d need your word on that.”

“You have it.”

Sherlock straightens after he has this affirmative from John, his shoulders settling into a relaxed line.

He studies John anew, as if he’s a specimen he’s never encountered before. “You’re different.”

John cocks his head. “How so?”

“No one’s ever made it this hard before.”

John chuckles and is rewarded by the smallest twitch at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth.

It doesn’t last long. “How long do I have? To prove myself?”

“You don’t have to prove yourself, Sherlock.”

“Then what did you mean? When you said ‘make me’, what were you referring to? What test do I have to pass?” His hands in fists at his sides, words crisply enunciated, cheeks stained scarlet. He doesn’t like having to ask.

“There’s no test. You just have to be willing. Are you?”

“I’m here aren’t I?”

John raises an eyebrow and Sherlock bites his lip. “Sorry.”

“When would you like to begin, Sherlock?”

He spreads his hands as if it’s obvious. “Today. Right now.”

“Ok. All right.” John licks his lips. Catches his glittering, intense gaze. Holds it. “The agreement is as follows: you will cease to work for me as my personal assistant, but I will see to it that you are placed in an adequately compensated role within one of my company’s subsidiaries where you are not under my direct supervision. And this time you will do your job correctly or you will suffer the natural consequences. You will live with me in my home and our relationship will be both sexual and domestic in nature. Consent will be required and obtained explicitly at every encounter. You or I may amend or end the arrangement at any time. Is this agreeable to you, Sherlock? Is there anything I’ve missed?”

“And I’ll belong to you. Say it.” Bitten off. Forced out on a harsh exhaled breath. John can see him struggling to get the words out, completely unaccustomed to asking for what he wants and needs. John is certain that in these types of situations before, from what he’s heard from Trevor and the others, the belonging was rather couched in terms of ownership and was thrust upon him, not asked for. It was often dependent on an exchange of money as well. “Please. I need you to say it.”

“And you will belong to me.”

The breath rushes out of him and his eyes slowly slide shut in relief.

“Come here, Sherlock.”

John rolls his chair back and makes room for Sherlock to step in front of him, between John’s spread legs, arse pressed to the edge of John’s desk. From this height John’s face is level with Sherlock’s hips and the erection distorting his trouser front. John looks up.

“You’re hard.”

Sherlock, eyes wide, lips parted, nods, slowly.

“You’ve been hard for weeks, Sherlock. It’s been very distracting.”

“I kept waiting.” Christ, he’s breathless. “I kept waiting for you to touch me. It was torture.”

“What do you want from me, now that you're mine?”

His voice is so quiet and so plaintive when he says, “Oh, Daddy, please, Daddy, help me.”

“Is that what you want to call me, Sherlock? You want me to be your Daddy?”

“Oh, yes, oh, please. I want it so badly.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The breathy deep rasp on him. It sends a hot pulse shooting down John’s body. His cock throbs and thickens in response.

“I want to give you what you want, Sherlock. So tell me. Tell me what you want Daddy to do to help you.”

“Will you kiss me?”

“I would love to.” John reaches up his hands. “Can I touch you? Can I put my hands in your hair? I’ve wanted to for so long now.”

And with a desperate shaky moan that rattles up and out of him at John’s words Sherlock surges down and presses his mouth against John’s. John slows him, weaves his fingers into his soft curls and holds him steady. Brushes his mouth over Sherlock’s top lip, his beard shushing against Sherlock’s skin. “Oh, Daddy, it’s so rough,” Sherlock murmurs, touching it with his hands. “It tickles. _Ah_.” John can’t wait to hear the sounds Sherlock makes when he drags his beard over other parts of Sherlock’s body, but for now he’s content to lick at the boy’s plush mouth until he slowly parts his lips. John takes the upper between his own, softly sucking on it until Sherlock groans, so deep it sounds like he’s hurt, and so John presses up, presses closer, tilting Sherlock’s head so that he can fit his tongue inside.

He’s a blank blinking mess when John pulls back a moment later. Him reeling back against the desk, his hands wrapped around the edge for purchase, looking down at John through his lashes, dazed and flushed.

“Undo your trousers, Sherlock, there’s my good boy.”

His fingers fly to obey, shuddering on the slip clasp before they fumble the button through and the zip down.

John helps him step out of them and guides him to sit on the edge of his desk in his pants and socks and button down. His cock is a stiff flag standing out from his body, tenting the black cotton.

“We have to be quick, Sherlock. Nicole will be calling me into a meeting any moment now.”

“I’ll be quick Daddy, I can’t wait much longer.”

“Would you like me to suck you?”

Sherlock’s eyes squeeze shut as if he can’t believe his luck and his shoulders wriggle a little in a tiny shiver as he nods, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“May I?” Thumbs hooked into the elastic band of his pants, flush against the velvety heat of his skin, waiting.

“Yes.”

John pulls them down just far enough to release him into the air. He smells incredible, musky and salty, and bobs there for a moment, rosy and hard, before John leans in and gets his mouth around him.

“Oh, Daddy, yessss,” Sherlock hisses, his large, warm hands falling onto the back of John’s head as he slides down the length to bury his nose in the thatch of sweat pearled auburn hair.

John backs off slowly, enjoying the feeling of having the weight of a cock on his tongue again. He wraps his hand around Sherlock as he backs off slowly, pumping him tight and quick as he pops off the crown.

John looks up at Sherlock, who’s thighs are spread as wide as the pants around his ankles will allow, his hands on the desk behind him, mussing John’s paperwork.

“I’m going to take care of you, Sherlock. You need only ask for what you wish and if it’s within my power and inclination I will give it to you.”

Throat arcing back. Eyes dark. Lips wet. “Oh, God. I’ve waited so long. Waited so long for you to want me.”

John speeds up, making sure to work his fist over the glans.

“That’s right, Sherlock. You’re mine now.”

That phrase seems to have some profound effect on Sherlock. He gasps and clutches at John.

“Oh, Daddy, _please_.”

“Tell Daddy what you want.”

He moans. “Your mouth, Daddy, I want your mouth.”

“Where?”

“On my, _oh_ ,” Sherlock pauses and pushes up into John’s fist. He’s close. “Cock. Daddy, your mouth on my cock, my cock, I’m—“

John just has time to slip the round pulsing head between his lips before Sherlock is spilling over his tongue.

“That was beautiful, my boy. You’re beautiful,” John says as he helps Sherlock tidy his kit a few moments later.

“What about you?” Sherlock asks, coy, as John leans back in his seat.

“I can wait.”

“But—“

“Like I said, I have a meeting right now.”

“But you’re—“

John adjusts himself and shakes his head.

“Sherlock, if I’m willing to trust you to tell me what you want, do you think you could kindly extend me the same courtesy?”

Sherlock looks at him as if he’s trying to decide if John is angry. Slightly skittish, slightly defensive. Unsure.

John softens and reaches out to gather him into his arms. John reminds himself what Sherlock is coming from. _Who_ Sherlock is coming from. Sherlock sits across his knees and drapes his arms around John’s shoulders. He leans down and rests his forehead against John’s and it’s so natural and right that it makes John’s throat hurt.

He nudges his nose down Sherlock’s smooth, freshly shaven cheek and sets his mouth against Sherlock’s ear. “You’ll finish going over the figures that Reina gave you and then you’ll go to your apartment and gather whatever you need. When you have everything head over to my house and wait for me there. I’ll be home by 7.”

“What—“

John squeezes Sherlock’s waist. “We’ll discuss it then, Sherlock. Please.”

“All right.”

“You’ll wait for me?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

John kisses him one more time, deeply, before patting him on the hip.

“Want me to get a take-away for dinner?” Sherlock asks, as he makes his way to the door. Relaxed, loping, a smile curving his lips. Christ, he’s lovely.

John smiles, grateful. “That would be great.”

“Any preference?”

“I think you know what I like by now.”

The smirk, this time, is entirely welcome.

“I’ll see you at home?” Sherlock’s hand, John notices, is white knuckled on the doorknob. 

John nods, smiling reassuringly. “See you at home.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock does as he is told. He turns in Reina’s report to Michael with his notes in the margins and heads across town to the bolthole he’d been staying in ever since things had gone south with Moriarty.

When Sherlock arrives at John’s address in Kensington he ignores the car tailing him and firmly locks the door behind him and sets the alarm.

He’s been to John’s place many times for work related errands. He had been given codes and keys and access when he first signed his contract with Watson Tech. After depositing the sushi he had picked up on the way over (a tray featuring all of John’s favourites) Sherlock drops off his things in a spare bedroom and goes to shower. While he’s in there he prepares himself thoroughly.

Sherlock is ready by a quarter til seven. John is a military man and values punctuality. Sherlock should know. He has been arriving to work late for months to try and get a reaction from the man. Now at least he can see why none of his tactics had worked. John is one of the rare dons who liked to believe that he was above the scene. He probably felt deeply uncomfortable somewhere underneath that calm exterior and made up for the shame and guilt by eschewing the trappings of the genre. Sherlock will figure him out.

He has to. It is as simple as that. Sherlock needs the protection while he figures out how to beat Moriarty at his own game.

 _It won’t work_.

The text comes almost immediately. As if Moriarty could read Sherlock’s thoughts even across the kilometres of city between them. _You’ll be back, Sherlock. They always come crawling back in the end._

Sherlock glares down at the phone screen. After changing his number three times Sherlock had given it up for useless when the texts kept coming.

_He can’t keep you from me. You belong to me._

_You’re mine, Sherlock._

_I owe you. Don’t you forget it._

Turning the phone off, Sherlock sets it on the dresser and walks out into the front entryway.

He’s standing there, naked, hands loosely clasped behind his back, feet shoulder width apart, when John inserts his key inside the lock.

“Hello,” John says, looking tired, as he sets his briefcase down on the floor and deposits his keys into the dish on the side table.

“Hello,” Sherlock says, keeping his eyes on John’s as John crosses the foyer to him.

The kiss, like earlier, is surprisingly gentle while still being powerful. John has a command over his lips and tongue that makes Sherlock’s mind fade to a snow white field. It makes the incessant buzzing thoughts quiet, replaced by a deep glowing hum. Sherlock relishes the tingling sensation that travels down his body at the brush of John’s whiskers across his skin.

“Do you always take tea completely starkers?” John asks, bemused, when he pulls away and takes in Sherlock’s bare body prickling up in the cold air.

“Does it please you?” Sherlock asks, unable to read the man yet. It’s off putting to say the least. Usually Sherlock was in possession of people’s darkest secrets at this point. Not so with John.

“You please me immensely,” John says, smiling, and running a hand through his silver fringe. “However, I’d love for you to be comfortable when we sit and eat together. There’s a robe in the bathroom cupboard just through there. Go and fetch it, yes? I’ll pour us some wine.”

“Yes, sir,” Sherlock murmurs, turning to go.

“Sherlock,” John says, stopping Sherlock with a hand on his arm. “Call me John.”

Sherlock looks at him, trying to puzzle him out.

“If you’d like, that is.”

“And what if I don’t like?”

“Then you may call me whatever suits you.”

Calm blue eyes. He’s a piece of work this one.

“I’ll be right back.”

John nods and Sherlock ducks into the bathroom at the end of the hall, listening to John’s retreating footsteps as he pulls on a white terrycloth robe and belts it around his waist. John is uncorking a bottle of red wine when he comes out.

“Is red all right?” John asks, the bottle hovering over one of the glasses.

Sherlock, who would prefer white, but knows that John detests it, nods. While John pours Sherlock goes to the refrigerator and pulls the sushi platter from the fridge. He sets it down on the counter and pops off the lid, then proceeds to set out plates and the ebony black sets of chopsticks that John brought back from Japan. As John sits down on the bar stool across from Sherlock, Sherlock prepares his plate.

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

Sherlock raises his eyebrows as he arranges the coral pink folds of ginger beside the sashimi. “I want to.”

“Well, then, thank you.” John takes a sip. Runs his hand over his jaw, scratching lightly at his beard. 

Sherlock comes around the side and sets the plate in front of John and then stands there for a moment, breathing in the scent of John’s cologne.

“Would you like me to suck you off while you eat?” Sherlock asks, as John picks up his chopsticks and freezes.

John turns his head slowly towards him. “Is that what _you_ want, Sherlock?”

“I want whatever you want.” Sherlock doesn’t blink.

“While you’re here you’re not beholden to me.”

This man grows more confounding and self-flagellating by the minute. Sherlock grinds his teeth to keep from saying something he will regret. He reminds himself that he needs John to like him and that John did not like it when Sherlock acted out. John wants Sherlock to do what he desires, and Sherlock desires to become necessary to John, wants John to crave him, so…

“I’d like to get up on the counter and make myself come, sir. I’d like you to watch.”

John’s face goes through a series of startled reactions. Sherlock can see him tonguing the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling as he considers this request.

“By all means,” he says eventually, turning back to his food.

Sherlock briefly steps out to fetch the bottle of lube that he had stashed in the entrance way in case John had wanted to fuck him against the wall upon arrival. That, at least going by Sherlock’s last few relationships, had been how the evening was supposed to play out. But Sherlock will make do. Exhibitionism is a forte and a role he feels comfortable in.

Sherlock hoists himself up onto the countertop right next to John’s right elbow so that he’s close enough that John will be able to see everything. He lets his legs dangle off the side and shrugs off the robe before taking up the bottle of lube. John dips a piece of eel in the puddle of soy sauce on his plate and brings it to his mouth. Sherlock watches the movement of his jaw while he chews and the bob of his throat as he swallows and brings himself to full hardness.

“What do you think about?” John asks, his voice pitched low, his eyes stroking down, over Sherlock’s chest to where his cock is lying, long and full and gleaming, against his belly. His gaze, warm and appreciative, takes in Sherlock’s bollocks and pubic hair, the pale splay of his thighs, before flickering back up to meet Sherlock’s gaze. “When you touch yourself? What do you think about?”

“You.” Sherlock knows what to say. For all that John is pretending to be different than the others, above them and their base urges, Sherlock knows what a Daddy wants.

He wants to be treated like a god.

“I think about you,” Sherlock whispers, “my big, strong Daddy, and, _ah_ ,” and then gasps as he runs his hands over his nipples, fingertips wet and sticky from the lube. They perk up beneath the light touch and grow hard as he circles them. “I imagine that it’s you touching me.”

“And how do I—“ John’s voice cracks ever so slightly and Sherlock feels a rush of gratification surge down his body at the sound. “—how do I touch you, Sherlock, there in your dreams?”

Sherlock closes his eyes.

“In my head I’m lying before you, laid out for you like a gift. I want to be a gift for you. All of me. It’s for you.” Sherlock lets his voice lower another octave so that it resounds in the quiet of the kitchen.

“Lie down for me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock does. Lays his hot skin down on the chill marble and brings his heels up, spreads his knees. He hears the robe slither off the edge and hit the floor with a soft _umph_.

“Shall I sit in front of you? Here at your feet?”

“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, wanting that very, very much, as he slips deeper into the head space he needs. He hears the brief scrape of the wood on the tile floor and John’s warm hand briefly cupping the back of his left ankle before he settles back down into his seat.

“You make a beautiful, beautiful gift, Sherlock,” John says, his voice soft and reverent in the darkness that Sherlock floats in. Sherlock feels it surround him, cradling him. “What next?”

“You tell me what to do. How to touch myself. You know me so well. You know what will make me feel good because you’re my Daddy and you take care of me.”

John lets out a shaky breath and Sherlock rests his palms on his chest, waiting.

He is in no way prepared for what comes next.

Because once John starts talking, Sherlock is so fully transported past all the bounds of his mind and body that he almost, almost blacks out.

“You liked it when you were touching your nipples, why don’t you get your fingers wet, put them in your mouth, yes, that’s so good, Sherlock, you’re so good for me. That’s it, oh, I see how responsive they are. They’re sensitive. Especially when you rub them around them like that. They get so hard. Just like your cock. I see it, how hard it is. There it twitched when you rubbed over them, oh there, again. Do it again. Oh, Sherlock, listen to you moan. You love it. You love to have your nipples rubbed so gently. I can see how it makes you feel. I can see how good it makes you feel. You’re making a mess of your belly, it feels so good. Do you feel it in your cock every time? Oh, my boy, the sounds you’re making, they tell me how good it is. Don’t hold back. I love to hear you make noise for me. Does it feel good to pluck at them, Sherlock? To take them between your thumb and pointer finger and pinch them? Oh, yes, Sherlock. What a good boy you are. Look at you, pinching your pink hard nipples for your Daddy. Daddy loves to see you make yourself feel good, Sherlock. You’re such a clever boy. You know exactly what I wanted. Harder, Sherlock. That’s it. Your cock is getting bigger, I can see how hard it is not to touch yourself. You’re leaking all over the place. I can smell your come, Sherlock. It smells divine. I love the smell of your body. Get them wet again, Sherlock. Suck on them, there’s a good boy. Oh, that’s sloppy. I like it. No, I love it. I love to see you out of your mind and sucking on your fingers and wanting them back on your nipples. Ok, all right. Imagine it’s my tongue slipping over you. Flick them, yes just like that. Oh, pinch them for me, Sherlock, yes, pinch them and imagine it’s my teeth closing over them, taking those hard beads in between my teeth and I’m nibbling them. Biting them. Flick them, flick them. There’s my tongue again. Yes, that’s it, do you want to touch yourself Sherlock? I can see how hard it must be, your poor cock, just lying there, wanting something tight and hot and wet to fuck. Here my boy, give me your hand. There you are, there’s your lube. Now wrap your hand around that long, pretty little cock. It’s so red and hard and I can see how tight your bollocks are, Sherlock. They were full and heavy just a moment ago, but you’re getting close aren’t you. Yes, moan for me, Daddy wants to hear all of it. Spread your legs wider for me, there’s a good boy, let me see your tight pink hole. Oh, Sherlock I can see you’ve been preparing yourself, haven’t you? I see how wet you are here. Here give me your other hand. I want you dripping. Daddy loves a wet messy hole. Oh, that’s perfect. Put your fingers inside. Oh, beautiful, look how well you take two. Can you reach far enough? Stop touching your cock, Sherlock. Good. Good. Breathe. Breathe for Daddy, that’s good. You almost came didn’t you? But it’s not time yet, Sherlock, it’s not time. Daddy hasn’t said. Daddy hasn’t said it’s time and that’s what you want, isn’t it Sherlock? For Daddy to tell you what to do? To take care of you? I love this. I love watching you give yourself pleasure. I love watching your body take three of those long, thick fingers of yours. You’re so pink and wet down here, Sherlock. I can’t wait until I can taste you here. I can’t wait until it’s my cock there, pumping inside you. Do you want that Sherlock? Is that what you’re imagining? My fingers, so slippery with lube, preparing you for my cock? Would you like that Sherlock? My cock in your arse? Oh, I can hear how that affected you. Daddy loves to hear how much you want that Sherlock. Ok, I know, I know. Daddy’s made you wait long enough. Put that big hand back on your cock and keep your fingers inside. Your hole’s so greedy for it. Look how it just swallows you up. Look how it squeezes so tight around your knuckles. That’s it. Oh, Sherlock, that’s beautiful. Yes, I see that you like it when you rub your thumb into the slit. I see how that makes the precome just drip out. I remember how that felt, Sherlock. I remember how it felt to have you leaking all over my tongue today in my office. Look at that. You’re so responsive. It feels good doesn’t it? That little burst of pain? I'd love to press my tongue there and feel your come smear all over me. Oh, Sherlock, oh, you’re so good for me. Yes, there it is. Oh! Oh, beautiful boy, you’re covering yourself in your come. Look at that. Look how hard you’re coming for your Daddy. Come here, Sherlock, sit up. That’s it. That’s it. You’re trembling, Sherlock. It felt good? Yes. I know. I know. Christ, I love it when you kiss me like that, Sherlock. Your lips are so soft and full and that noise you make. Yes, make it again. Fuck, Sherlock, do you feel what that does to me? Put your hand, yes, there. Oh, God, how good you make me feel. Are you surprised? Soon enough, soon enough. Shall we go upstairs and I’ll draw you a bath? Or is it straight to bed for you? You’re shaking. Let Daddy take care of you. Shh. Shh. That’s what you said you wanted. Forget the food, ok, all right, we'll have a picnic. I'll bring it up in a moment. Come with me. Take my hand, my sweet boy. You did so, so well. That’s it. Come along.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I guess I'm writing this now??? Apparently being stuck in a hotel room is great motivation to write porn. Oy. Any comments are, as always, greatly appreciated <3 <3 <3


	3. Chapter 3

“Open.”

Sherlock does, lolling lazily against the back of the tub, eyes half lidded. He closes his lips around John’s fingers as he deposits a snowy piece of cod draped over a bed of rice onto his tongue.

John takes back his hand slowly, letting Sherlock suckle for just a moment, and then drags it through the hot bath water to detach the rice pellets that are clinging to his fingers. He leaves it there, tips just skimming the skin of the water, with Sherlock’s body laid out below it’s clear surface. The steam rises up and touches John’s cheeks, licking wet and warm against his beard. It makes his hair damp and heavy at its roots and he scratches at it absently.

John picks up a sliver of tuna with his chopsticks and wishes he had thought to bring up the tray with the ginger and wasabi.

Sherlock chews, his eyes fixing onto the ceiling. John watches as his attention focuses, something passing through his mind. John waits for Sherlock to return his gaze once more to him before he asks, “What?”

“What led you to the scene? It obviously wasn’t the leather clubs.”

John splashes him a bit. “Obviously?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, impertinent as ever. “Yes, obviously.” But he sobers quickly, eyes searching John’s, serious. “You don’t play the way they play.” He pauses and John nods, encouraging him to go on, but Sherlock just shakes his head and narrows his eyes a little, as if he can’t quite figure it out. “You’re different.”

John lifts his hand out of the water and rests it on the lip of the tub. Sherlock reaches out and rubs his fingertips lightly over the tops of John’s knuckles. Water droplets run down John’s fingers to drip back into the tub, making the surface ripple.

“You’re right, I didn’t get started in the leather scene. I’m afraid it’s not all that interesting though.” Sherlock keeps running his fingers over John’s hand, drifting lightly over the back, before finally coming to a rest atop his wrist, long fingers curling underneath. John counts the freckles on his skin and sketches the rigid blue veins in his forearm with his eyes. “I had a boyfriend in the army who liked it; wanted to call me Daddy when we fucked. I was uncomfortable with it at first. It didn’t feel right. All those reasons people hurl at us: that it’s playing at incest, that it’s degrading, that it’s built on unequal power structures, that it’s abusive. I believed all of it at first.” John’s cheeks still sting at the memory, a vestigial shame response that burns in his chest. He doesn’t fight it. Just lets it wash over him. It passes quickly. “But, at the same time, I loved it when we role played it together. It felt so…so…”

“Illicit?” Sherlock supplies, as John searches for the right word.

“No, it felt natural. Like I was in my skin, like I was inhabiting every bit of my body. It was intense and it scared the bloody hell out of me and so I broke up with him.”

John laughs and Sherlock squeezes his hand around John’s wrist, gaze soft, leaving the silence there for John to continue.

“After I got back from the war I avoided everything for a long time. I was injured and living with my parents and working for my dad. I couldn’t practice medicine anymore. I was lost. Then I met someone online. I had been lurking on London Daddy message board sites for a while, just watching and learning. Getting acquainted with the language and the customs. And one night I messaged someone and we met up. The rest is history. How about you?”

Sherlock pulls his hand back and sinks lower down into the tub until the water is lapping at his sharp collarbones. “Not much to tell. I had two before Moriarty.”

“How long were you with Moriarty?” John asks, unable to keep the obvious curiosity from his voice. He’s heard rumours of course, but John would rather get the truth from Sherlock.

“Three years.”

John can’t keep the shock from showing on his face. From what he has heard of Moriarty this seems like too long. It raises questions for John about what Sherlock might have needed from him, or, conversely, what he might expect from John. Sherlock, seeing it, flushes scarlet across his cheeks and looks away.

The mood is in danger of being ruined so John brings it back around. “What drew you to it? To the dynamic?”

It seems to work. Sherlock looks back up at John and some of the chill has melted from the icy silver-blue of his eyes. His voice is steady, calm. “I like to be controlled. My mind is…unruly. I have trouble regulating myself. I used to use drugs to overwhelm it. But when I’m with someone, in this way, I’m able to function better. If I know there will be relief, if I know that I can ask for what I need, to give up control to someone else, put it in their hands, and know that I’ll be taken care of, I can get through the day. It quiets things.”

John feels his chest expand at Sherlock’s willingness to share this with him. Warmth reaches out through him, connecting them.

“What finally made you ok with it?” Sherlock asks.

“This.” John gestures between them, trying to encompass the exchange of stories, the telling of truths, the debunking of shame. “The honesty and vulnerability that’s required for this type of relationship to work, it’s the sexiest thing in the god damn world to me.”

“So, you’re a bit soppy, then,” Sherlock teases, not unkindly, smiling tentatively. Maybe a little afraid. They’re still feeling their way around one another, touching each other’s edges and asking, does this hurt? Is this ok? Here? How about here?

“I guess I am,” John says, smiling. Saying: that was ok. I liked it. You can do it again. “I like that there's no pretence. I can be as effusive and sweet and caring as I want. In fact, it's one of the things I love the most. I get off on being able to give my partner pleasure. I get off on them trusting me with their most intimate wishes, with their bodies, with their thoughts and fantasies. It’s incredibly heady for me to be with someone who is willing to be open like that and for me to be open with them in return. I take it extremely seriously, Sherlock.

Sherlock nods, his pupils large in the blue pools of his eyes. His hair is wet at the tips, weighing it down, and striking it in inky slashes across his throat, just beneath the pink curves of his ears. It gleams almost purple in the low light. John kneels up and reaches out and touches him, slides his palm up Sherlock’s chest, feeling the hot smooth expanse of his skin, to wrap lightly around the back of his neck.

“I want you to feel safe with me, Sherlock. I want you to set boundaries with me. I want you to have a safe word and I want you to know that you can always use it. I’ll have one too.” Sherlock leans up, the water lapping at the sides of the tub, until their foreheads are touching.

“You’ve had more practice at this than me,” Sherlock says, quiet, his breath moving softly over John’s lips. “It was different with M. I’m going to make mistakes—“

“We’ll go at your pace,” John soothes, and then Sherlock, words tripping over each other, quick, “I want to do it right.”

“All I need from you is communication for this to work. Can you do that?” John nuzzles the rough side of his nose and brushes their mouths together.

“Yes.”

“Good. Sherlock, you’re so, so good.”

Sherlock moans and presses forward, deepening the kiss. John opens to him and Sherlock’s tongue pushes in, stroking against his own.

They’re both breathing harder a moment later when Sherlock says, whinging a bit, “It seems dreadfully unfair that I haven’t even seen you yet, let alone touched you. You’ve had me on your desk and your kitchen counter.”

“Would you like to see me, Sherlock?”

Sherlock draws in a sharp breath, and lets it rush back out, “Yes.”

“Would you like me to get a condom first? The lube? I saw that you had your test results on the counter waiting for me. That was thoughtful. Do you want to see mine?”

“God, no,” Sherlock says, his hand sliding down between the tub and John’s lap, cupping.

“You should care if I’m clean, Sherlock.”

“I do care, I care deeply.”

“Really? Well, would you like me to show you—“

“I care because I want you bare. I already saw them anyway. They’re in your email. What kind of assistant would I be if I wasn’t managing your inbox? Now. I want your cock in my hand, Daddy. I want it now. _Please_.”

“So bossy,” John says, gasping the last part out when he feels the damp heat of Sherlock’s hand seep through both trousers and pants. He presses himself, the thickening length of himself, into the touch, ignoring the preposterous assertion that Sherlock had been managing anything of John’s up to this point.

“It feels huge,” Sherlock whispers, kissing across John’s cheek, while he gropes John down below.

John turns his head and catches Sherlock’s mouth, distracting him. Soon both of Sherlock’s hands are in John’s hair, mussing it wildly as John sucks on his lips until they’re swollen and red as cherries. It gives John enough time to get his belt undone and his trousers opened. The head of his cock is just peeking out the top of his waistband, shiny and round. He feels hard enough to pound nails, but he slows his breathing. Patience is a skill he’s cultivated over many years of topping. The drawing out of sensation is an art all it’s own. As much as John loves giving pleasure, it always heightens things when his boy wants to reciprocate. It makes John light headed, the way Sherlock looks down at him, like his mouth is watering.

“Oh, Daddy,” he breathes, his pink tongue drawing so slowly over his plump bottom lip. Pale, pale blue eyes blink up to John’s, rimmed in coal dark lashes, pleading. “May I?”

“Yes, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s hands fumble clumsily at the waist of John’s pants, artlessly trying to get them down as quickly as possible. John places his hands on top of Sherlock’s and helps him. Guides them down.

When John is finally revealed in the golden light of the bathroom, Sherlock is left speechless.

They both stare down at it and John feels a ridiculously giddy spill of pride flood through him at Sherlock’s gaping mouth and his hungry dark eyes.

In certain circles John Watson’s cock is legendary. Unrivalled across three continents. Possibly more. It is, quite simply, beautiful. Long, but not too long. Curved, but not off centre. Thick, but, well, is there a thing as too thick? John thinks not. It is a hearty weight in one’s hand. It fills it and more. It’s a lovely blush colour and the foreskin is silky, gliding down the shaft, to reveal a perfect crown. The slit glistens and, as they both watch, a bead slides down to catch in the dark hair that curls between John’s thighs.

Sherlock reaches down, transfixed, and wraps his hand around the base, thumb tucked up against John’s balls, smearing the small pearl of pre-come out. John wants to push, to thrust, but he holds back, letting Sherlock explore him. The textures of his skin, the circumference, the dexterity, the veins. Sherlock pulls him down, head towards the floor, testing, and runs his fist up and down, wrist flexing. Tugging.

John breathes. And. Breathes.

“I knew Daddy would have a big cock for me,” Sherlock says eventually, recovering his confidence. He leans into John, with the porcelain side of the tub between them, and sets his lips at John’s ear. His hand, moving, slowly, tightly, between them. “What does Daddy’s cock need?”

“I like it when you talk to me, Sherlock. What does it make you feel?” John asks, wrapping his hands around Sherlock’s waist, thumbs resting beneath the jut of his hip bones.

“It makes me feel like I want to taste it,” Sherlock says, with a soft moan as John stiffens in his grip. “Like I want to ride it.”

John shivers, wracked by flashes of hot and cold that leave his mouth dry and his heart pounding. “Oh, that’s so good, Sherlock. I love to hear that. Tell me more.”

Sherlock pauses, dipping his chin, and letting a drizzle of saliva drop down. John feels it hit off the right side and he pushes his hips up, as Sherlock’s fist slides down, smearing the heat of his mouth down John’s shaft.

“It makes me want to be so good for it. It makes me hard. Makes my cock wet.”

“Yeah,” John breathes. He breathes. And. Breathes. Slips his hands around, sliding in the water from the bath, into the small of Sherlock’s back.

“It makes me think about what plug I would use to prepare myself for it. It makes me think about being secreted under your desk, licking it, sucking it, while you conduct a meeting. Makes me think of you coming on my face, on my lips and chin. Makes me think about you keeping me hard. You keeping me plugged. So that you could pull me into your lap whenever you needed me.”

John groans, seeing it, behind his eyelids: Sherlock’s tight hole between his thighs, laid out at John’s feet while his accountants went over the quarters numbers none the wiser. A plug snugged inside. Cock in a ring. John’s cock throbs inside the tight circle of Sherlock’s spit slick hand and John feels heat gathering in his thighs and hips, radiating brightly out to tingle in fingers and toes, erasing the dull pain in his knees as he kneels on the cold tile floor.

Sherlock keeps talking, his voice deep and scratchy in John’s ear. “It makes me think about kneeling for you. To give you my mouth. My arse. I think about all the places I could take it out and sit on it. A movie theatre. A park bench. A bridge with our coats to hide us. Oh, Daddy, think about how I could bounce on it in an empty Tube car. Think how you could tie me up and make me come on it. I think about it. I think about it all the time.”

“ _Sherlock_.”

“Daddy, it would fill me so completely. Touch places inside me no cock has ever been. It would mark me inside it would get so deep. Make me walk funny the next day. Everyone would know that my Daddy has a big perfect cock and that he fucks me so good with it. So big and perfect that I’m aching the next day, but still begging for it because I feel so empty without it. Oh, Daddy, it’s going to _ruin_ me.” Sherlock spits again and the sound is loud in John’s head, echoing the sharp slap of skin on skin, and John is so close, so close.

“Kiss me, my perfect, perfect boy,” John gasps, leaning in and crushing their mouths together, feeling it build and build inside him.

They break apart a moment later, Sherlock’s fist still flying over John’s cock, when John’s phone buzzes loudly against the tile floor.

The lit up screen reads: Travis.

Bugger. He has to take it.

“It’s work,” Sherlock says, not letting go. Not slowing down.

“Fuck,” John bends and scoops it up, holding a finger to his mouth a moment before he punches the answer button.

“What is it?” John asks, breathless, and listens with 1/100000th of his brain.

Sherlock pulls at him, kissing John’s neck. His wet mouth sucking on his Adam’s apple while his big wet hand works John’s big red cock. Not making a sound. John watches the tip pulsing, watches Sherlock’s grip tightening, tightening. Sherlock is showing John that he can be quiet and it explodes in John’s mind: all the ways that John could put that to good use.

John, by some miracle, comprehends the change in plans that the CFO’s assistant is communicating to him and he just has the presence of mind to thank Travis and request that he forward him his flight information, before hanging up and tossing his phone behind him.

Saying to Sherlock, with his hands sunk to his wrists in his curls, and licking into Sherlock’s mouth in between sentences, “Could take you anywhere, if you stay quiet like that, just like that, my boy, could bend you over the table and fuck you through conference calls, could put you on your hands and knees on top of my desk and eat you out with my door open at lunch time, when all and sundry could walk in and see my tongue in your arse. You know just what I need Sherlock, fuck, look at what just your hand is doing to me,” shuddering, panting, “It’s too bad you’re not my assistant anymore or I’d take you with me on this trip tonight. What would we do up there thousands of miles above the earth? Just you and me?”

“You don’t have to imagine it,” Sherlock says, hand moving faster and faster. “Because I didn’t put in my notice. I’m still your assistant. And if you have to go to New York three days early to deal with that Novarsky issue before the gala, then I’m going with you.”

John tries to breathe, but he can’t. All he can feel is hot battering waves coursing through him, moving out from where Sherlock is touching him.

“You can stand me up and spank me for all the world to see,” Sherlock murmurs, painting the image on the walls of John’s squeezed shut eyes. “I’ll have to be so quiet and good for you so that the stewards won’t hear. You can spank me, Daddy, so that every time I sit down tomorrow I’ll think of your hand imprinted there on my skin, and then, then Daddy, you can take this big gorgeous cock,” his tongue, his hand, his words, “and you can fuck me. Raw.” And John curses and folds over the edge of the bath just as he comes, shaking, spilling thickly over Sherlock’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I asked for some reader feedback over on Tumblr surrounding whether or not people cared that I don't have the time to devote to really making this as tight plot and editing wise as I would normally. Most people said it was fine to just post what I have as I go. I intend to clean it up later, but for now it's mainly just going to be porn because I just can't seem to get this story out of my head. Have a prompt for me? Something you'd like these two to get up to? I'd always love to hear your head canons and who knows? It might spark something! Let me know in comments or on Tumblr. Thanks for reading and, as always, comments are much appreciated <3 <3 <3


	4. Chapter 4

Inconvenient.

That’s what John Watson is.

John Watson with his crisp, tailored suits and his velvety brown beard and the callouses on his thumbs that make Sherlock shiver and his voice that makes Sherlock heel. John Watson with his damnable drownable dark eyes and his war record and his thin pink lips that he licks and licks and that kiss Sherlock until he’s woozy, his blood fizzing up to bubbles like it is now, in anticipation, in promise, in pleasure. That kiss Sherlock like he wants nothing more than to kiss him, asking nothing more of Sherlock but what he wants, not forcing, just inviting, just enjoying. John Watson with his calm, like the eerie quiet eye of a storm; he is sure of himself like no one Sherlock has ever met.

It’s inconvenient.

Because Sherlock knows that it can’t be true. John Watson is hiding something, for the very basic reason that, in Sherlock’s experience, _everyone_ is hiding something, and that no one, in the history of the world, can truly inhabit the calm that John Watson exudes without a very, very good reason. And oh how Sherlock would love to find out what lies beneath John’s placid pacificity. His earnest generosity. His kind solicitousness.

But Sherlock doesn’t have time for one more mystery right now. He has to focus all his attention on Moriarty or it will all fall apart. Or, to be more accurate, Sherlock will fall apart.

It’s abominably unfair, Sherlock fumes, tapping his finger against his cheek as the car carries them through London at midnight. To have John Watson here with him and not be able to parse every thought that flickers across his face. To have John Watson here and not be able to devote every second to the shades of blue his eyes turn and categorising what mood they correspond to. Sherlock hasn’t even properly seen him naked yet. After John had come, he had taken a shower while Sherlock dressed and packed. Sherlock needs sunlight, moonlight, noonlight, lamplight. Neon and dawn and candle and street and fluorescent and phosphorescent and…

Indignant, Sherlock pushes his knuckles, hard, into his mouth.

“Sherlock,” John says, and Sherlock jerks his head, startled, to look at him. At inconvenient John Watson smiling with just the corner of his mouth, head tipped towards the window, where a jet sits on the tarmac. “We’re here.”

Sherlock, with a flutter in his stomach, follows John out of the car and up the ramp steps.

The inside is butter and cream and dark wood paneling. The cool leather molds itself to him when he sits in the seat across from John, the carpet plush beneath his shoes. Over John’s shoulder he glimpses the door to a room with a bed. A bathroom is tucked into a corner across a narrow hallway. As Sherlock gets his bearings, a red haired woman with a name tag that reads Nora serves them still water with ice.

As the plane begins to roll out towards the runway John sips contemplatively at his glass and studies Sherlock over the rim.

“You’re angry,” Sherlock says, smoothing down his shirtfront with his palm.

John sets down the glass and shakes his head. Folds his hands in his lap. “I’m not angry.”

“Disappointed.”

“No.”

“I disobeyed you, of course you’re upset.”

“I keep trying to tell you, Sherlock. I do not control you.”

It seems like a pedantic quibble over language. Sherlock represses the urge to roll his eyes. “I belong to you and I misbehaved. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, Sherlock, it’s not.”

“Then, enlighten me.”

John presses his shoulders back into his seat, drawing the line of his spine straight. It makes Sherlock’s stomach muscles clench, makes his skin buzz, makes his brain go still.

“You belonging to me, means that I care for you. It does not mean that I am in charge of you. You are responsible for your actions.”

“So, are you going to punish me?”

“No.”

“Why not?

“Because that is not our arrangement.”

Sherlock could argue further. It itches beneath his skin, the urge to push John, but he knows it won’t work. He needs to cultivate new skills; what worked with M, won’t serve him here.

“How do we proceed then?”

John’s eyebrow ticks upward and he runs his thumb along the edge of his bottom lip, eyes dark, almost black.

“I was going to have you reassigned to a different department so that you would feel more comfortable—“

Sherlock can’t help but interrupt, “That’s not how you did it with Trevor.”

John pauses. Something moves through his eyes that Sherlock can’t read. He nods. “I admit it hasn’t been the way I’ve done things in the past.”

“Then why with me? Why send me away?”

“You don’t seem to be interested in what we do at Watson Tech, Sherlock.”

Sherlock, who had been expecting something about insubordination, blinks at him, reassessing.

“Trevor and the other boys wanted to be groomed to enter the business world. Shadowing me was helpful to what they wanted to ultimately achieve. But that’s not what you want is it?”

Sherlock doesn’t move, doesn’t deny or agree.

“I don’t think it is.” John takes another sip of water. “I would rather you spend your days pursuing your own interests. I’ll help you any way I can, with any resources I have. I know your parents were eager to see you settled in a stable job, but this doesn’t have to be it.”

“And what if I want to be your assistant?” Sherlock’s voice comes out slightly hoarse. He clears his throat and takes a sip of water, feeling uncharacteristically off balance.

Inconvenient.

John’s stare is direct and intense and uncomfortable. Sherlock shifts in his seat and recrosses his legs. He picks at his cuff, pretending to pluck at a loose thread.

“If that is what you really, truly want, Sherlock, then I won’t object.”

“I do.” He doesn’t—can’t—meet John’s gaze.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock swallows.

“Sherlock, look at me.”

And just then, just as Sherlock’s cheeks throb and swell and his mind begins to race concocting some lie to tell John about how he wants nothing more than to be a CFO of some Fortune 500 company, he is saved by the crackle of the intercom and Nora telling them to buckle their seat belts and prepare for take off.

They’re quiet as the jet climbs into the night sky.

Sherlock can feel John watching him, but he keeps his eyes shut and his hands steepled in front of his mouth, willing his heart rate back to normal. Instead of focusing on what he doesn’t know about John Watson, he zeroes in on what he does. And he starts to formulate a plan for how the rest of the trip is going to go.

Once Nora comes over the speakers to tell them they’ve reached cruising altitude and that it is safe to move about the cabin, Sherlock is ready to proceed.

But when Sherlock opens his eyes, John isn’t there.

Sherlock whips around in his seat, searching for him.

“I’m in here,” John calls from the bedroom at the back of the plane, voice muffled through the thin wall between them. Sherlock unbuckles his seat belt and goes to join him.

John is standing at the foot of the bed. His suit jacket hangs in the closet to his right, his cufflinks glinting on the chest of drawers just behind him. He’s rolling his sleeves up as Sherlock enters the room. Sconces along the walls lend a soft golden light. Above the bed hangs a black framed mirror that runs the length of the bed, reflecting back the navy blue duvet and the crisp white pillows. A pale blue angora throw blanket is draped over the foot of the bed. Once Sherlock is done taking inventory of the room he lets his gaze sweep back to John, who is watching him with that same intensity. Sherlock feels like John can see through him and it sends a thrill skating down his spine.

“I don’t want you to lie to me, Sherlock.”

“I didn’t—“

John’s voice is low and firm as he interrupts. “Maybe not, but I think you were going to.”

Sherlock’s mouth purses.

“I don’t need you to lie to me. If you’re not ready to tell me why you want to stay my assistant, then that’s fine. We’ll leave it at that. But I don’t want you to lie to me. This won’t work if you do. Do you understand?”

Sherlock, swallowing back a retort, nods.

John finishes rolling up his left sleeve and sets his hands on his hips, the tendons in his forearms flexing.

“Are you hungry? Tired?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

John, watching him carefully, slowly nods.

“You told me that this type of relationship helps to quiet things.”

“Yes.”

John takes a step forward.

“That sometimes your mind needs to be overwhelmed.”

Sherlock looks down at the silver blonde fringe swept up from a brown brow and deep black-blue eyes as John stops directly in front of him. John licks his lips and they shine, red, amid the dark frame of his beard. Sherlock takes in a deep breath through his nose and smells starched cotton, musky wool, and the fresh stirring scent of John’s cologne: vetiver and bergamot and tobacco and nutmeg.

“Sherlock,” John says, softly, sliding his hands inside Sherlock’s suit jacket to cup his ribs. “I need to know what your safe word is.”

Sherlock’s heart slams against his ribs, the air knocked from his lungs.

“I. I don’t know.”

John’s brows draw down. “What do you mean? Didn’t you have one with…?”

Sherlock, knowing the weight of the consequences, shakes his head.

Now John looks stunned. He steps back from Sherlock, hands dropping away, down, into fists.

“I can’t believe him,” John says, lips thin and white. His eyes are furious.

“Forget him,” Sherlock pleads, wanting John’s hands back on him. Wanting John’s voice low and rough with suggestion and desire, not tight with anger.

“I can’t forget him, Sherlock. This is, it’s the one rule we all have, ok?” John’s hands work at his sides, clenching and unclenching. “And if he couldn’t even—“

“It’s not important. Please.”

“It is important, Sherlock. It’s the most important thing!”

“But he’s not—“

John pushes a hand through his hair, disarranging it. “God, he must have done a number on you. I didn’t think it was this bad, but—“

Sherlock jerks back, scalded.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he says, voice as cold as his body feels, all the blood draining out. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

John’s eyes fly back to Sherlock, wide and full of regret.

“Fuck, Sherlock, that’s not what I meant.” John leaps forward and suddenly his hands are on Sherlock’s elbows as he guides Sherlock to sit on the end of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he says, as he crouches at Sherlock’s feet. “I’m sorry. That all came out wrong. Can I have another go?”

“I’m not…damaged. I don’t know what you think happened, but—“

John rubs his thumb over his eyebrow, one hand braced on Sherlock’s knee. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I never should have said that. Never should have implied that. I was angry. I was, I am, so bloody angry that he didn’t do that for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ matter. Sherlock, I need you to understand that your safety is—“

“No, I mean, it doesn’t matter what he did. We can do it differently.”

The corner of John’s mouth tugs up, his whole face softening in relief. “So you’ll forgive me, then? Because I’m truly sorry for being so careless. I know you’re not damaged. You’re lovely and you’re right, he doesn’t matter here. It’s just you and me.”

“I forgive you.”

John runs his hands up the outside of Sherlock’s arms to cup his cheeks, looking grateful.

The kiss he pulls Sherlock into is tender and deep. Sherlock allows himself to sink into it, letting some of the chill seep out of him as John touches him gently.

“You’re amazing, you know that? Brilliant. Fantastic. Beautiful.” John murmurs, kissing along Sherlock’s jaw and down his throat. The brush of John’s beard sends tingles dancing out through him, making his toes curl in his shoes. Sherlock wants to know what it feels like when it brushes along the rest of his body.

“Can we pick one now?”

John chuckles against Sherlock’s neck and then pulls back far enough for their eyes to meet.

“Go on then. What would you like it to be? It can be anything that will come easy to you. Something silly or a colour—”

“I have done this before,” Sherlock says, drily.

“It’s been a while though, yeah?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ve had a lot of men choose red.”

“Well, I am not like most men.”

“Bloody hell, you’re right about that.” John’s affectionate grin makes Sherlock’s chest feel tight. “What did you use before Moriarty?”

Sherlock shifts on the bed. “You’ll laugh.”

“I promise I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

“It’s fine.”

John waits for it, the corners of his eyes crinkled in preparation.

“With my first it was…” Sherlock takes a deep breath. “Pickle.”

John falls over he laughs so hard. Sherlock watches him roll onto his side, clutching his chest, and can’t help but join in.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, that’s good,” John gasps, a few minutes later, using Sherlock’s knees as leverage to pull himself up to kneeling. “Oh, fuck me, that’s wonderful. Pickle. It’s genius. If there’s ever a word to pull you out of a scene, it’s that. How the hell did you come up with it?”

“It was…an inside joke of sorts.”

“Well,” John says, wiping his eyes. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to match it, but we can certainly try. Fruits are common. Or how about an animal? I had a bloke who chose Dachshund once. He liked how German it sounded. What’s an equally odd one…I dunno, penguin?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Otter?”

“I used pineapple with my second. Will that work?”

“Of course it does. Are you sure?”

“Yes. Now, are you going to spank me or not?”

The slow, fond smile that spreads across John’s face bursts something hot and sweet beneath Sherlock’s breastbone that melts down to pool in his belly. “Christ, you’re a joy.”

“I was very naughty, not doing what you asked,” Sherlock reminds him coyly, inviting the scene to begin.

“You weren’t naughty,” John says, letting his voice drop lower, his hands rubbing up the outside of Sherlock’s thighs. “You were being good, Sherlock. You were trying to tell me what you needed.”

“I can be better, sir.”

“Tell me what you want, Sherlock.”

“I want you to spank me. I want it so badly.”

“I can see that,” John says, his eyes dropping down to where Sherlock’s cock is starting to plump up and press against his flies.

“Please,” Sherlock breathes, parting his lips.

“Well, when you ask so nicely…I think perhaps we’d best get you out of these clothes.”

Sherlock scrambles to stand when John straightens and goes over to the dresser, already tugging off his jacket. Having fetched two bottles from the top drawer, which he sets down on top, John turns and hangs up each item Sherlock hands him in the closet. Upon landing in New York they’ll be immediately taken to John’s townhome where they can get a few hours sleep before John meets with Irene Adler, nee Novarsky, the CEO of Novarsky Inc. at 8am.

When Sherlock is finally naked and John is finished folding his pants neatly beside his rolled up socks in the middle drawer, Sherlock turns to face him.

“God,” John says, exhaling sharply. His dark eyes rake over Sherlock’s bare flesh, making him prickle with the attention. “How are you real?”

John’s gaze lingers on the sharp lines of Sherlock’s clavicles, the hard knots of his nipples, the taut plane of his stomach, before coming to rest on the heavy cock that’s bobbing out, a little away from Sherlock’s body.

“You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen.”

Sherlock scoffs, blushing, “You must tell all of your boys that.”

“No, Sherlock, I don’t,” John says, as genuine as he ever is, and Sherlock, for some unfathomable reason, believes him.

The air seems to grow hot around them as John steps up close enough to reach out and settle his hands on Sherlock’s hips. Sherlock’s skin hums at his touch and heat pulses out through him. John is dressed in just his light grey trousers and a blue button down. It makes his eyes shine unnaturally bright. His tie has been removed and the first two buttons are undone, revealing the cut of his throat and the ridge of his Adam’s apple and the soft dark texture of his beard.

“I appreciate you telling me what you want from me,” John says quietly, stroking his palms up to Sherlock’s waist. “I can tell it doesn’t come naturally in this type of situation for you. I want to give you everything you want, Sherlock. It makes me feel so good to make your wishes come true.”

“You’ve taken such good care of me so far.”

John is looking up at Sherlock, his brows drawn down slightly in the center and it makes something painful, like fear, catch and tear down Sherlock’s throat. “I want to be careful with you, Sherlock. I’d like it if we could take things slow.” Sherlock can feel that same coldness as before start to seep back in. It’s not as if he isn’t accustomed to rejection; it was one of M’s specialties, after all. But it made it that much harder for him to secure John as an ally, if things kept getting dragged out. Sherlock hates how much he needs John, but the simple fact of the matter is that he does. And if he can’t figure out how to get John under his spell, well…Sherlock’s mind can’t go there.

_I owe you._

John sees him start to retreat, start to pull away, but he holds Sherlock steady. “No, don’t take it that way. I’m not saying stop. I’m saying we play at a slower pace while I’m getting to know you. While I’m getting to know what you like, what you don’t like. How much you can take and what your boundaries are.” John takes Sherlock’s face between his hands and stares at him with the blue depths of the sea. “My goal is that you never need to use your safe word with me, Sherlock. I take my role very seriously, I want you to know that. I’ll be watching you carefully, but it will take me some time to be able to read you well, and for you to feel comfortable with me in return. So it’s extremely important to me that you use it if you need to and that you communicate to me if I do something that doesn’t feel good or right. I need to know you’ll tell me if I go too far and we can do that by starting out slow. Does that make sense?”

Sherlock nods, maybe a tad tersely, a tad impatiently, and John smiles. “Thank you for humouring me,” he murmurs, and leans up to kiss Sherlock. At the slide of John’s mouth over his own, Sherlock forgets his frustration. He makes a small helpless noise in the back of his throat and presses himself against John eagerly. Sherlock wants to slip into that space he goes to when someone else is holding the reins. There is so much spinning outside of his control right now that it feels incredible to give it up for a short time and let the whirring machinery of his mind rest. Remembering how good it felt when he was on the counter, coming undone just to the sound of John’s direction, Sherlock closes his eyes as John says, “I love all the little noises you make for me when I touch you.” He noses down to press his open mouth to the thud thud thud of Sherlock’s heart, and Sherlock, lost inside the sensation, tips his head back and makes another one. “Just like that,” John says, his beard both soft and brusque across Sherlock’s throat. “I think I’d quite like to know what sounds you’d make for me, Sherlock—“ Sherlock grips John’s shoulders to keep from falling as John sucks gently on Sherlock’s pulse. “—when I turn you over my knee.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Kneel on the bed for me,” John says, quiet, but firm. He watches as Sherlock, eyes pupil-black, lips ruby-red, and legs rubber-kneed, does as he is told.

As Sherlock arranges himself on the edge of the bed facing John, long legs folded beneath him, large hands resting lightly on his pale thighs, John walks to the dresser and fetches the almond oil and the salve.

Letting them drop down onto the dark blue duvet John stands in front of Sherlock.

“Sherlock, before we begin, I’d like to ask you a question.”

Sherlock tips his head up to meet John’s eyes. “Yes, sir?”

John shivers. It sends a hot spike drilling up the length of his already hard cock. He likes that. Likes it a lot. Sir. He’s so good. So perfect for John.

John wants to reward him so he slides one hand into the cool curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck and cups his head. John hears the way Sherlock’s breath alters in that moment. He intentionally slows it, drawing air deep into his lungs. John watches Sherlock’s ribs expand, his belly fill. He lets it out in a slow, controlled rush. It tickles the ends of John’s beard. His breath smells of mint.

“I’d like to understand what you like about this sort of scene. It helps me to know what to focus on. Is it the pain? The punishment?” John rubs his fingers against Sherlock’s scalp, watches the boy’s dark lashes flutter, enjoying the sensation.

“Submission,” Sherlock says, quietly. “I like to…submit myself to you.”

“Thank you,” John murmurs, grateful for his honesty. Sherlock presses himself back into John’s touch. “You’re welcome, sir.”

“You’re being very good for me, Sherlock. Sitting so still. Doing what I ask. I would like it very much if, when I sit down, you would lie over my lap. Do you think you could do that for me?” John speaks slow and gentle, asking, not ordering. If it’s about submission then it should be willing. And John can guess, from what little Sherlock has told him so far, that willingness was not a part of his dynamic with Moriarty.

“Yes, sir, I can do that.” John slips his hand out of Sherlock’s silky black hair and steps over to sit down beside him.

Sherlock shifts, turning his body towards John. With a hand resting in the small of Sherlock’s back John guides him until he is on all fours, arched over John’s splayed thighs.

John runs his palm up and down the long line of Sherlock’s spine and reaches beneath him with the other to wrap around Sherlock’s cock. The foreskin glides inside his fist, running up and down the stiff length. Sherlock shudders, his head dropping down between his shoulders, heavy.

“I want you lower. Would that be all right?” John requests and Sherlock nods. Gripping the hot core of him, John tugs, pulling Sherlock’s hips down, until his cock is snugged between John’s thighs and he is laid out across John’s lap, arse tipped up.

John smoothes his hand over the plump white moons of Sherlock’s arse, feeling the short downy hairs stand up against him as he moves.

“You have a beautiful arse, Sherlock,” John says, low, appreciative. For a man so thin it has a delicious jounce to it, a delightful weighty jiggle as John manipulates it with his hand.

“Thank you, sir,” Sherlock says, breathlessly.

“I like it when you call me sir,” John says. “Reminds me of being in the military. You’re such a good boy, giving Daddy what he wants, what he didn’t even know to ask for. Such a good, good boy, listening and doing exactly what he asks of you.” John speeds up the motion of his hand, rubbing it this way and that so that Sherlock can’t telegraph what will happen next. A helpless moan escapes him. Anticipation making him round his shoulders. “Good boys deserve to be taken care of. Good boys deserve to be rewarded for their good behaviour.” And with that he lifts his hand and brings it down with a firm, solid smack that rings out in the quiet room. The groan that shakes out of Sherlock is uninhibited and loud and ecstatic. The effect is stunning, roses blooming over his white skin where John’s hand had landed, his skin prickled up to goosebumps all over.

John does it again and watches as Sherlock hips thrust into him, his cock trapped between John’s wool clad thighs. This time Sherlock tries to muffle his moan by burying his face in the duvet, but John gently fists his hand into his hair and pulls him up.

“I’d like it, no, I’d love it, Sherlock, if everyone on this plane could hear how much you like this.”

Sherlock trembles all over at this request.

“Yes, sir, anything, sir. Please.”

John’s hand lands on his left cheek with a loud snap and Sherlock moans, eyes squeezed shut in bliss.

“Beautiful, perfect boy.”

_Sm-mack!_

_Sm-mack!_

_Sm-mack!_

Sherlock’s hair is still held in John’s hand, his neck arched, his arse bowed, his loud panting breathes filling the room with their ragged sound, the very picture of submission.

John loves to watch the way Sherlock’s cheeks bounce, reverberating after each slap. Loves to see that way the blood rises to the surface of his alabaster skin, staining it crimson. He loves the way Sherlock shouts and cries out with each resounding thunder-crack of John’s hand on his skin. Loves the way his cock leaks into the fabric of John’s trousers, a hot brand clasped between John’s thighs.

After ten spanks, John pauses, letting Sherlock wilt against him, getting his breath back, and takes up the bottle of almond oil. Getting his fingers slick he returns them to Sherlock’s arse, slipping them between the reddened cheeks and rubbing them straight down the centre.

“Ohhhhh,” Sherlock breathes, his knees spreading automatically to allow John room to slide all the way down to his perineum. John circles his fingertips there, applying pressure just behind the tight, drawn up sac of his bollocks. Sherlock’s right knee slips off the bed and they spend a moment repositioning so that Sherlock can spread his legs just wide enough to give John access to every part of him, without him falling off the bed.

“I’ve been thinking about touching you here for quite some time,” John admits, revelling in the slippery glide of his fingers through the coarse crinkly hairs that grow around Sherlock’s arsehole. “Have you been thinking of it?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, oh.” Sherlock’s cock is throbbing, John can feel the pre-come, wet against his inner thigh.

“Ever since I got my first glimpse of it, while you were showing me how you pleasure yourself on my kitchen counter, I’ve been wanting to explore it.” John drags his fingers over the puckered skin of the entrance to Sherlock’s body, back and forth. Back and forth, steadying the restless shifting of Sherlock’s hips across John’s lap with his other hand.

“I’d like to finger you,” John says, “would you allow me to touch you here, inside?”

Sherlock, shaking with tiny electric tremors, nods, his blushing cheek pressed into the mattress, his black eyes wide and looking up at John with absolute permission.

“I need you to answer me, sweetheart. I need to have your explicit submission, Sherlock.”

The word has a profound effect on Sherlock. He relaxes. All tension flowing out of him, he melts over John’s body, transported. His eyes, when they meet John’s are euphoric and grounded at once.

“I want you to give yourself to me. I want you to give your pleasure into my hands. I want to spank you and I want to finger-fuck you. I want to touch your prostate. I want to ruin my trousers with how much come you’ll produce for me. I want your orgasm, Sherlock. I want your noises. I want you to give yourself to me. Will you?”

He’s clearly undone. John watches as any and all barriers that existed between them in this new space they are exploring together are obliterated in one blow.

“I give myself to you,” Sherlock says, with stunning, beautiful conviction. With absolute vulnerability and trust. John can feel a fierce, overwhelming tide of emotion in response to this answer and he has to lift Sherlock’s open face to his and take his mouth with all the tenderness that is brimming inside him.

John kisses him. Runs his wet, grateful mouth over Sherlock’s and tastes salt from two tracks of tears that have cut down Sherlock’s cheeks and run into the corner of his mouth. John kisses them away, pressing his lips to Sherlock’s cheeks and eyes and nose before letting him lie down once more.

Sherlock tips up his arse, the lines of his back in repose, in acceptance, in peace.

John spanks his pretty arse until it’s pounding with his heartbeat beneath his palm, until Sherlock’s hands are clutching the duvet above his prostrated head, until his voice is hoarse from exultation.

Only then does John wet his fingers again and slip one inside Sherlock’s body.

“Lift your hips,” John says, and Sherlock does.

Gets his elbows underneath him and lifts them just high enough for his cock to slip out from between John’s thighs and hang, heavy and flushed, over the top of John’s lap.

John slides his finger deeper, following the curve of Sherlock’s passage, feeling the clutch of his body squeeze around him.

When he finds the round, raised patch of skin John begins to rub in tiny circles and watches as the tip of Sherlock’s cock pearls.

The shaft twitches, bobbing up and down, as John rubs. And rubs. And rubs.

Cream thick drops begin to bead on the crown, dropping down to spatter across John’s grey trousers.

“You’re making a proper mess of my trousers,” John says, pleased, and watches as Sherlock drops his head down to see, moaning, breathing hard, as he paints his pleasure across John’s thighs. “What will Nora have to say when I give them to her to be cleaned? What do you suppose they’re saying about you up in the front there? You, screaming like a tart, being spanked like a naughty school boy?”

Sherlock throws his head back and pushes back, spearing himself on John’s finger.

“Do you know what they’ll say?”

Sherlock shakes his head, cock beginning to turn a deep purplish red as John moves the pad of his finger over and over and over his prostate again and again and again.

“They’ll say that I have the best boy in all the world.”

John draws his finger out and Sherlock whimpers, shuddering all over with need. John doesn’t tease him, just slicks them up and adds a second. Thrusting them deep together to resume their incessant circling.

“They’ll know that you gave yourself to me so perfectly, so honestly, Sherlock, that you deserved to feel every pleasure you wanted.” John drops the timbre of his voice, lets it boom in Sherlock’s ear. “Are you feeling it, Sherlock? Are you feeling everything you wanted?”

Just then a spouting gush of come spurts out of the spasming slit of his cock and Sherlock convulses, arching, as he comes all over John’s trousers and the duvet.

John fucks him through it, through the final, weak pulsations of thin translucent come, until Sherlock, overcome and weak and giddy, collapses on the bed in exhaustion, smiling. John wraps him in the soft Angora throw and lies down beside him, ruined trousers stripped off, stroking the curls that fall across his forehead and tucking them behind his ear.

They sleep this way. For what feels like hours, but in actuality is only a handful of minutes, Nora’s voice waking them to announce their imminent descent into New York. Her long experience serving as John Watson’s stewardess means that she lets them know with enough time to apply salve and giggle and dress and kiss and become presentable again. Experience that has taught her to always carry ear plugs with her wherever they go.


	6. Chapter 6

It's never happened before, Sherlock thinks, as he kneels, back bent, stomach pressing into his knees, beneath the conference room tables, waiting for the pre-lunch meeting to begin. It happened, the crying, of course it had, in scenes before this. The journey into sub space could be overwhelming, the body flooded with hormones and pain and pleasure all at once. His eyes had watered, he had cried, but he had never felt so overcome that he had _wept_ before.Sherlock was loath to admit it, but whatever had happened last night, it had served to forge the bond with John Watson that he had been trying to form since he first took the job as his assistant. And, unsettling enough, it had gone both ways.

Safety, Sherlock thinks, tucked in the darkness with the lemony smell of wood polish and the sharp tinfoil scent of the carpet filling his nose. There had been no feeling of safety with M. Sherlock had never trusted him, and it was never encouraged or offered in the first place. In fact, much the opposite. M considered Sherlock, inherently, as an opponent. And while it had lent a certain explosiveness to their sexual encounters, it had served to make any type of trust impossible.

John Watson, inconvenient as ever.

Despite the troubling fact that Sherlock feels connected to him on some deep and unfathomable level, he knows, rationally, that he needs to strengthen it if his plan is going to work. John has spent the morning sequestered in private meetings with Irene Adler that Sherlock, though he had tried, was not allowed to sit in on. Sherlock, frustrated, sought out the day’s schedule instead, and, seeing that John would be sitting in with his financial advising team on a video presentation about Novarsky Inc, the conference room had immediately offered itself to Sherlock’s imagination. Two large conference tables pushed together with a third laid across the ends, meant that if he were to hide beneath them and make it so that John was the only one seated along the far end, the chances of him being discovered were low.

The door to the conference room opens and a second later the lights flicker on. Sherlock, cheek resting against his folded forearms, watches as people began to file inside and take their seats. John is the last one in and, to Sherlock’s relief, takes the seat that Sherlock had laid a leather folio in front of. He’d filched it from Irene’s secretary’s desk. It contained glossy information packets and a financial audit that was meant for the CFO. Folded name tags that Sherlock had printed quickly in an empty office sat in front of every chair but that one, directing everyone else to the front of the room.

Excitement begins to hum through him, buzzing against his skin, the risk of exposure making his heart pound.

Sherlock creeps forward as John sits down in his seat. Sherlock had lowered it so that he would have more room to work and he needs to reach John before he fiddles with the controls to try and raise it. Just as John reaches down Sherlock wraps his hand around John’s ankle, making him push back from the table in surprise. Sherlock holds him firmly in place so that he can’t roll away and peers up at him, holding a finger to his lips in supplication.

John blinks at him and then up, back down, and up, his eyes sweeping over the room. A slow, wondering, awe-filled smile tugs at the corners of his mouth as he looks back down at Sherlock, and sliding his chair forward, cups his cheek. Sherlock tilts his head, letting his eyes slip closed as John strokes the pad of thumb over his cheek.

A Novarsky employee begins to speak, standing in front of the projector screen at the opposite end of the room. Sherlock shuffles backwards as the man makes his way to the back of the room to turn on the video and switch off the lights before he takes his seat at the front of the room once more.

The sound over the speakers is loud enough to give Sherlock cover, the darkness of the room aiding him still further.

Once more kneeling between John’s spread legs, he reaches up and lays his hand over the already burgeoning erection that curves up the crease of John’s thigh to the right. Beneath Sherlock’s palm it stiffens further, Sherlock’s eyes upturned, John’s face illuminated by the bright light of the screen. Sherlock holds his gaze, rubbing him in slow motions until he grows rock hard and so incredibly long beneath Sherlock’s fingers. Sherlock draws the zipper down and coaxes the magnificent cock out into the air.

Fuck, it’s a beautiful cock. The thickness makes Sherlock’s throat ache, the round head makes his mouth water. It stands out from John’s body, proud and immense, spotlit by the screen light.

Sherlock, aware of the video’s relatively short length, immediately leans in to get his tongue on it. Dragging the flat of it up from the base to swirl around the crown. He does this a few times, until the shaft is well coated and slick and moves silkily through Sherlock hand as he wanks him. John’s eyes are trained straight ahead, the fingers of one hand curved over his mouth. Sherlock marvels at his self-composure, and, feeling a bit wicked, leans forward, intent to rattle it, just a little bit.

With the fat spongy head sliding along the top of his palate, he succeeds. John’s other hand falls onto the back of Sherlock’s head, lightly at first, helplessly, as if he needs an anchor.

Sherlock bobs up and down, working the thick length in his fist, keeping tight suction as he glides.

John’s hand begins to exert more pressure, taking a handful of Sherlock’s curls and guiding him, pushing him down, down on his cock, until Sherlock’s throat is raw and singed and tears smart at the corners of his eyes. John, sensing this, tugs and pulls Sherlock up and off, his dark eyes boring into Sherlock’s for just a second as Sherlock works that huge cock in his hand. The look burns through Sherlock, and he knows that if they were alone that John would have kissed him right then. Sherlock, imagining the rough drag of John’s beard over his mouth, the soft, wet texture of his lips, the insistent, claiming push of his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth, shivers and prickles all over.

Tension vibrates through John as Sherlock places both hands on his thighs and begins to suck him off in earnest. He keeps his eyes upturned so that each time John allows himself to tear his eyes away from the screen to look down at him, Sherlock is looking obediently upwards, his mouth stretched out around John’s cock, as John manoeuvres him, setting the rhythm. Sherlock can sense that he’s close, can feel the hot bitter stream of his pre-come trickling down his throat, can feel the erratic heartbeat pulsing beneath John’s skin, and Sherlock redoubles his efforts wanting to get him off before the video ends.

But John, it seems, has other plans.

With his grip fierce and unyielding, he pulls Sherlock off his cock and holds him apart. Sherlock tries to lean forward, tries to reach for him, but John pins his hand.

The look in his eyes is commanding and Sherlock, although he doesn’t understand why, sees that John wants him to stop. So Sherlock helps tuck him away, helps him zip up, and with one last stroke of John’s thumb over his cheek, retreats back under the table just as the video ends and the Novarsky man gets up to turn on the lights.

Sherlock is a bundle of nerves beneath the table. He second guesses himself, wondering if he had fucked up. Was John angry with him? Had Sherlock misread him? His heart thunders in his ears as he hears, distantly, John saying that he needs to make a phone call and would Nick please lock the door behind him on the way out? Sherlock waits for the rest of the people to pass by him and for the click of the lock in jamb before he crawls forward.

John is already pushing his chair out and reaching down for him, leaning down to meet him, and crushing their mouth together in a desperate kiss that Sherlock feels explode through him in hot bursts of relief and pleasure.

“Perfect boy,” John murmurs, his hands moving over Sherlock rapidly, as if he wants to touch Sherlock in every place. Sherlock opens and lets John plunder his mouth, lets himself melt against him as John’s strong arms surround him, gathering him close.

“You took an enormous risk, setting this up for me,” John says, a few minutes later, when Sherlock’s head is floating light as cotton and he feels drunk from John’s searing kisses.

“I know,” Sherlock says, as John leans in once more to kiss him deeply, as if he can’t help himself. The prickle of his beard sends Sherlock’s body into overdrive, his skin tingling.

“I wonder, my boy, if you’d be willing to take one more.”

Oh, the dark promise in those words, in John’s suggestive tone, it makes Sherlock go boneless.

“Yes, anything,” Sherlock manages to whisper before John’s hands are underneath his elbows and helping him to stand.

“Undress.”

One word.

One single word from him and Sherlock’s hands are on his buttons, not caring that just on the other side of the door are people who could catch him. And this time, he has no plausible reason for being starkers in a conference room. He can only hope that employees are beginning to scatter for lunch, but he keeps it at the forefront of his mind: the absolute need to keep quiet.

John stands back from him and shrugs out of his fitted navy-blue suit jacket. Hanging it on the back of his chair as he watches Sherlock struggle with his cuffs. Coming forward John takes Sherlock’s mouth in his and undoes them for him, stepping away so that Sherlock can remove it and start on his trousers. Sherlock’s fingers are thick and pounding with blood. They make him clumsy and slow. John pulls two chairs away from the table as Sherlock strips off his pants and socks and finally stands naked before him.

John’s eyes scald him as he drags them over Sherlock’s body, hungry and hot and intense.

“Lie down on the table,” John says, voice dark and low. “With your head at this end, there’s a good boy,” John directs him, until Sherlock is lying flat on his back against the smooth cool wood, perpendicular to John, his feet almost reaching the other end.

John steps up to the table’s edge and Sherlock watches as John begins to run his hands over Sherlock’s chest. He scrubs his fingers through Sherlock’s sparse chest hair and rubs his palms down Sherlock’s leaping belly to the jut of his hip bones. Sherlock’s cock is stiff and standing straight up, but John ignores it, dragging his hands back up to rest in Sherlock’s collarbones.

“I want to fuck your mouth properly,” John says, moving a thumb over Sherlock’s already swollen lips. Sherlock can’t help but moan at this request. He wants it so badly he can’t speak. “How would you like that, Sherlock?”

“Oh, Daddy, please.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

“Minutes, sir. Don’t worry about me.” Sherlock tilts his chin up so that he can look up the length of John’s body to the honey sweet pools of his eyes.

“I wonder, Sherlock,” John says, his thumb tracing the bow of Sherlock’s upper lip. “I wonder if you might be able to not come for me.”

Sherlock stills.

“I wonder if you might be able to hold it for the entire day. So that I might have you all to myself tonight. In our bed.”

Sherlock trembles all over. 

“I think I could manage that, sir.”

John bends at the waist and kisses him briefly before straightening once more.

“Unzip me.”

With trembling fingers Sherlock reaches up and fumbles John’s trouser button through it’s hole and drags the zipper down until they are open and pooled around his hips. John holds his shirt up and out of the way, releasing the sharp salty scent of his desire into the air. Sherlock breathes it deep through his nose as John’s huge, hard cock looms over him, obliterating the light.

“Before we begin,” John says, with steel in his voice as he struggles to control himself. “I want a signal we can use instead of a safe word since your mouth is going to be otherwise engaged.”

Sherlock taps John’s thigh three times. “This?”

“When you need to breathe, or want to stop, you tap me three times and I will stop immediately, do you understand?” Sherlock nods.

“And remember, you’re saving yourself for me tonight.” One more swipe of John’s thumb over Sherlock’s mouth as Sherlock nods again.

“Scoot down a bit, I want your head off the table. Yes, good,” John says softly as Sherlock obeys.

Without receiving the command, Sherlock opens his mouth and John, gripping himself, slides right in.

All the blood rushes to Sherlock’s head and throbs in his temples, in his forehead. He doesn’t mind. He is a vessel for John’s pleasure. Everything else fades, reality narrowed down to the feel of John using him. Sherlock, wrapping his hands around John’s hips, encourages him to move deeper, to fit himself into Sherlock’s throat.

“Oh,” John says, shocked. “Oh, I can see myself.” He reaches down and Sherlock can feel his fingertips tracing the shape of himself through the skin of Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock swallows around him, tight, tight, tight and John moans.

John undoes the buttons on his shirt so that it can hang open, giving him free reign of his hands. He gets his fingers wet and plucks at Sherlock’s nipples, sending frissons cracking through him and making his cock twitch and bob in the empty air. Sherlock feels his bollocks tighten, squeezing close to his body and he wills himself to calm. It doesn’t work as well as it usually does and Sherlock feels, in the background, a rising, cresting, feeling building.

John fucks him good and slow. His cock carves out a place for itself in Sherlock’s open, willing throat and while he can tell John is trying valiantly to be quiet, his ragged breathing and whispered words of praise tell Sherlock all he needs to know about how much John is enjoying himself. Pride flushes through him, adding to the dangerous feeling already swelling inside him.

“You take my cock like such a good boy,” he says, his words slurring slightly. “I love seeing your pink lips stretched out around me. I love watching your throat fill with me. I love how you’re listening to my wish and not touching yourself. Your poor little cock is so hard and pink. I know it’s difficult. You’re doing so, so well.

With his fingers still rubbing and gently pinching his nipples, wracking Sherlock with prickling sensation, John leans forward, cock shoved as deep as it can go, balls resting against Sherlock’s forehead, and takes Sherlock’s cock tip in his mouth. Surprised, Sherlock is unable to stem the tidal wave that crashes through him and his cock jerks and spills inside John’s mouth.

Sherlock can’t move, skewered as he is on John’s cock, but his whole body is filled with shame and embarrassment. He whines around John’s cock in desperation, but John doesn’t pull back in horror or anger. He just takes Sherlock’s still sensitive cock deeper inside his warm mouth and suckles him. His hands are gentle on Sherlock’s stinging skin as he straightens up. Meeting Sherlock’s eyes which are wide and round with fear and apology John shakes his head. “You’re perfect. Please, Sherlock, I need you…” and he trails off, his eyes rolling up into his head as he thrusts once, twice, and floods Sherlock’s mouth with his come.

“Shh, shh,” John says as Sherlock scrambles up afterwards, kneeling on the table with his head bowed, guilty and clutching at the floating edges of John’s shirt.

“I’m so sorry. You asked me not to. I’m sorry. I never—“

“Sherlock, stop.”

“I would never disobey you. You just, you make me feel so good, and I wasn’t expecting you to—“

“Sherlock.” The tone makes Sherlock go silent. He feels John’s hands in his hair, urging him forward, until Sherlock’s forehead is pressed to the centre of John’s chest, the beat of his heart thumping steadily behind his ribs.

“I’m not angry with you, Sherlock. It’s ok that you came. In fact it makes me incredibly happy.”

Sherlock pulls away, blinking at him like an idiot. “Happy?”

John’s smile curves and Sherlock’s stomach flips at how handsome he is, with his dark beard, blushed cheeks and blue eyes. “Exceedingly happy.”

Sherlock is at a loss. This man is confounding. “How? How can that be true? You asked me—”

“I was watching you,” John interrupts him again, gazing at him tenderly. “Your whole body was reacting to what we were doing together. You were transcendent and completely absorbed, so intent on giving me what I wanted that your body was suffused this utterly radiant glow. It was incredible to watch you lose yourself that way.”

Sherlock looks back at him in shock. This man sees him in a way no one has ever seen him before. In intimate detail, in appreciative detail, in loving detail. It makes Sherlock feel slow and stupid and off balance.

“You never have to apologise to me for taking pleasure when we’re together. In fact, in the future, if you do, I will be cross with you.”

Sherlock buries his face in John’s neck and wraps his arms around him, not wanting him to see whatever flummoxed expression he is wearing at the moment.

“I think perhaps we might just change the nature of the game,” John says, stroking Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock, feeling steady enough to meet his eyes, pulls back just far enough to look at him.

“I’d like another chance, if you’re willing.”

John’s smile is crooked and affectionate and Sherlock doesn’t deserve it, but he basks in it anyway. “I think maybe instead of you not coming, we see just how many times I can make you come today.”

Sherlock’s skin breaks out in goosebumps at the possibilities this game opens up. “Oh, yes, sir, I think that’s a spectacular idea.”

“One I’m sure you’ll excel at, no doubt,” John says dryly, teasing. “You have a rebound rate the likes of which I’ve never seen. I’m a bit jealous, to be honest.”

Sherlock blushes and looks up at John coyly through his lashes. “I’ve never come quite so many times with any of my other Daddies. It speaks to your prowess as a lover, sir.” Coquettish and an obvious attempt at shameless flattery, but then John is kissing him bruisingly again, his hands hot and possessive on Sherlock’s hips, so Sherlock considers it a success.

“I think perhaps we should get dressed and pick up lunch before anyone notices how long we’ve been missing,” John says, leaving Sherlock breathless and spinning from his kiss as he steps away to begin buttoning himself back into his suit.

“How many times is that today then?” John asks, reaching for the doorknob after they are both presentable again.

“Twice, sir,” Sherlock says, as they duck out into the hallway.

“Do you have a goal in mind or shall we just try and set a record?”

Sherlock mulls this over for a moment. “Lets set a record, and then, next time, we can try and break it.”

John looks at him with pride, which makes Sherlock smile despite himself, as John holds open the office door for him.

His voice comes quietly from behind Sherlock as he steps onto the crowded elevator a moment later, “Be on the ready, then, Sherlock. Today just became very, very interesting.”


	7. Chapter 7

John looks out the window over the New York skyline and runs the pad of his thumb over his lips.

He sits in Irene’s private conference room. The door leading to her office is open, the blinds on the bank of windows that face her office and the hallway adjacent are drawn up. John was replying to emails and taking care of myriad details that needed his attention before the gala tomorrow night. If he swivelled his chair to the left he would be facing Irene who is perched on the edge of her desk in a lush viridian green dress made of couture silk. The neckline plunges in a sharp, structured V down to just below her diaphragm, revealing soft white skin and setting off her lustrous dark hair. Her nails are a glossy crimson, matching her lipstick, and her heels are high and spiked and black.

John probably should have been thinking about Irene’s offer, about her sudden interest in acquiring Watson Tech, about the deal before him that seems too good to be true.

He should have, but he isn’t.

Instead he’s thinking of Sherlock.

After lunch Sherlock had climbed into his lap inside the backseat of the town car and John had kissed him while Sherlock rubbed off against him, coming inside his pants. John had dropped him back at the hotel to change, leaving him with orders to meet him back at Novarsky Inc., in the afternoon. John can’t shake the look on Sherlock’s face that he caught just as the car pulled away from the kerb.

Cold.

Calculating.

And yet, at the same time, desperate.

John had made inquiries. Quietly. But Moriarty’s web isn’t talking. The man exerts an incredible amount of control over people, even those who have only dealt with him tangentially.

John needs Sherlock to tell him, but senses that Sherlock isn’t ready yet. He obfuscates, John can see him coming up with lies, his eyes darting away when John has asked him directly. It makes John ache to see it.

Sherlock needs John, that’s clear, but the look he’d glimpsed on Sherlock’s face when he didn’t know that John was looking, had sent a cold spike drilling through John’s chest. It isn’t how John operates, through false fronts and manipulation. He’d felt like they’d had a breakthrough on the plane, Sherlock’s walls had been down, they’d connected, but now John can feel the machination of Sherlock’s mind churning when they’re together. He is trying to please John. Trying to figure out what John wants so that he can give it to him. Normally that would have been fine, it isn’t as if his other boys hadn’t done the same, but with Sherlock it feels as if there’s an ulterior motive, as if something rides on Sherlock ensuring John’s possession of him. Something big.

And without Sherlock’s honesty, John doesn’t know if it’s for Sherlock’s own protection or if it might possibly be a threat to John.

A sinister shiver moves down John’s spine as he feels his mobile buzz inside his jacket pocket.

_Do you have your headphones? SH_

John taps out a yes and waits as the three dots pulse on his screen.

_Put them in. I’m going to call you. SH_

John bends and fishes around in his satchel until he finds the box that holds his wireless headphones. He tucks them into his ears and waits.

When the FaceTime jingle goes off he swipes right to answer.

Sherlock, kneeling naked on their hotel bed, fills his screen.

John glances up and, seeing that Irene is seated at her desk, sharp eyes intent on her computer screen, leans back in his seat and nods at Sherlock to begin.

He’s beautiful as ever. John is struck by him over and over, can’t help but be in thrall to him. The long lithe lines of his body, the angles of his face, the sweet bow of his lips, the cut-crystal quality of his eyes.

But there’s a distance now, John can feel himself removed from the scene, not participating, as Sherlock presents his smooth, pink, very recently waxed arsehole to the screen and begins to finger himself. John can feel himself watching from above, observing, cool, unaffected. He can’t shake the feeling that this is all for show. That this isn’t the real Sherlock. That this is a puppet. Or, alternatively, a man who has never been taught to value what he wants, who he is. A man who has been taught to put the pleasure of others above his own.

John eyes the sex toys on the bed beside Sherlock’s right knee. Two plugs, two dildos, all in increasing size, both length and girth. John can guess what will come next, as Sherlock’s moans fill his ears, breathy and needy. He’s preparing himself for John. Preparing himself for John to take him. For John to fuck him anywhere, at any time.

Last night, in his bathroom, Sherlock’s suggestions had made his blood pump hard and fast through his veins, had made his mind race with images, made his cock hard.

Today he feels slightly ill. He thinks of the conference room in a new light, wondering how he hadn’t seen it earlier. How he had allowed Sherlock to think that this was what John wanted. Sherlock, with his powerful, brilliant mind, bending it to cultivate John’s favour.

“Stop.”

He sees Sherlock’s spine lock, the motion of his hand freezing in mid-pump.

“I have to go. You will wait for me at the hotel. I’ll be there soon.” John’s voice is thick, some emotion he can’t readily name cinching his throat.

Sherlock turns slowly, the look on his face embarrassed and unsure, but still, John can see, his thoughts are racing, trying to read John, trying to get ahead of him.

“I—“ Sherlock starts to say, but John cuts him off. “Don’t. Don’t say anything. Just wait for me.”

Sherlock’s eyes are downcast but he nods.

John ends the connection and stands up, striding into Irene’s office to make his excuses.

 

**********

 

 

With traffic it takes John forty minutes to arrive at the hotel.

When he opens the door Sherlock is on his knees directly in front of him, silent and still as the marble he kneels on. He’s naked and his skin has taken on a blue-tinged hue in the chill of the penthouse foyer.

Angry, John stalks past him, searching the suite for a blanket. Unable to locate one in his current mood, John strips the duvet off the bed, drags it into the foyer and drapes it over Sherlock’s prostrate body.

“Get up,” John says, controlling his voice as much as he can. Sherlock obeys him, standing on weak knees. There are deep red impressions in his skin and they make John senseless with rage. He slings Sherlock, pillowed in soft white down, into his arms and carries him into the bedroom where he lays the boy down carefully.

“Wait here,” John says, smoothing Sherlock’s curls back from his forehead and looking him directly in his wide, confused eyes, before he leaves to make tea.

As he goes through the familiar motions, his favourite tea things waiting for him in the kitchenette, prepared in advance by the hotel staff who know him well, John feels some of the frustration and fear and helplessness seep out of him, the violent jerkiness in his hands calming. As he steeps the tea he thinks, assessing what is the best way to get through to Sherlock, the best way to scale the wall that keeps them apart.

When he walks back into the bedroom he has a plan.

He urges Sherlock to sit up and hands him the mug, wrapping the duvet tighter around him. John flicks on the bedside lamp and begins to undress. Sherlock’s eyes follow him around the room as he sets his cufflinks, tie pin, mobile, wallet, and pocket detritus on top of the dresser. As he discards his clothes piece by piece on the armchair in the corner by the closet door.

Once John is completely bare he kneels on the ground in front of Sherlock’s feet and casts his gaze up at him through his lashes.

Sherlock’s attention is zeroed in on John, his brows furrowed, his thoughts chasing madly behind his eyes, trying to guess at what John is playing at.

John has to smother a smile, Sherlock’s stunning intelligence and flustered confusion at once is adorable and John feels affection burst hot and sweet beneath his breastbone and melt down his navel. He wants to give this man everything.

“I want you to humour me tonight. Do you think you could do that?” John says, not in character yet, wanting to ease them into it. He’s watching Sherlock carefully to gauge his reaction. It could be a gamble, what John is about to suggest; he knows some men would balk at it. It would feel too unnatural.

“Is that an order?” Sherlock says, his deep voice a mere whisper in the quiet of the room.

John shakes his head, an ache burning in the back of his throat. “No, it’s not an order. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Ever.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow on John as if he cannot fathom him.

“I’m asking you,” John reiterates, waiting for his assent.

Sherlock, obviously still baffled, nods warily.

“You’re still not being honest with me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock flinches, just a brief twitch at the corners of his eyes, but it tells John all he needs to know.

“It’s ok. I’m not angry.”

“You seem angry,” Sherlock blurts out, a blush creeping slowly up his neck.

“I’m not angry _with you_ ,” John amends.

Sherlock brings the mug to his lips and blows across the surface. The steam curls up to where his hair is falling once more across his brow. It’s a distraction, he’s giving himself time to think. John’s hands shift on his knees, wanting to reach for him, wanting to touch him. He reigns it in. Stills.

“I’m not angry, but Sherlock, I can’t continue to do this with you if I can’t trust you to be acting out of true intention and not an ulterior motive that you feel like you can’t tell me about yet. It feels wrong to me. I won’t participate in it.”

Sherlock visibly pales, blanching against the snow white duvet he’s wrapped in.

“I’m not ending things,” John soothes. “I know that trust isn’t built in a day. But I want you to know that you are completely safe with me. Even if there are things you can’t tell me. I will not toss you aside. I will not send you back into danger. I will protect you, Sherlock, but I cannot have a physical relationship with you. If all you need from me is safety, then you have it. If Moriarty is a threat to you and you need someone to help you get out from under him, I will help you, Sherlock. You do not have to win me over with sex. You can stop trying to figure out how to please me, so that I will keep you close. Tonight, right here, this can all stop, and you will still be safe. Do you understand?”

Sherlock sags, the mug listing in his hand, his eyes glazed.

Silence descends and John, nervous, heart thumping, waits it out. Waits for Sherlock to look at him. For Sherlock to absorb what John just offered him.

It only takes a minute for Sherlock’s gaze to snap back onto John’s, hot. John recoils a little at the unexpected heat there.“Just like that?” Sherlock says, his words clipped.

“Yes,” John says slowly, not understanding. “Just like that.”

“And what if I need this,” Sherlock gestures, tea sloshing up and over the rim of the mug and spattering onto the duvet. Irritated, Sherlock glares at it as he sets it down on the bedside table.

“Then I need you to stop trying to figure out how best to keep me satisfied.”

Sherlock makes an outraged scoffing sound and rolls his eyes. “That,” he hisses, leaning forward, “is the whole point of _this_ type of relationship.”

John shakes his head, watching Sherlock circumspectly. “Not to me.”

“You’re impossible.” Sherlock throws up his hands, the duvet sliding off his shoulders to puddle around his waist.

“I’m really not.”

They watch each other for a long moment; tension, a wire pulled taut between them.

Sherlock is the first to break down, his face shattering along hard lines into heart-rending vulnerability as his eyes slip shut. “I need this,” he says, softly, slightly desperately. He puts his hands in his hair, agitated. “I have to. I have to have this. I can’t—“

“Then lets try something different,” John suggests, having expected Sherlock to respond this way. It’s a relief, almost, that he has. It confirms that John knows him better than he thought.

“What?”

John licks his lips, heart pummelling his ribs like a fist. “I want to be you tonight.” Sherlock’s eyes squint, uncomprehending. “I want you to be Sir and I want to be your boy,” John says, taking the chance. “I want you to show me what you want your Don to be like.”

Sherlock stares at him, poleaxed.

John bows his head, as he has seen his boys do so many times before, assuming the posture of subservience, letting it subsume him.

“You…you…” Sherlock stammers. “You want me to—“

“Yes, sir,” John says, the tone of his voice becoming more pliant, more agreeable.

“You want me to—“

“I do, sir. Anything you like.”

John stares at his hands curled around his knees, feels the prickling heat of Sherlock’s gaze on the back of his neck.

“You’ll be my whore. My slut. Mine to do with as I like.”

John feels a hot blush break down his body at the disdain laden in Sherlock’s voice, in his words. This is instructive already, John thinks, trying to steel himself against the sadness that threatens to seep through and engulf him.

“If you like, sir,” he says mildly, not reacting the way Sherlock expects him to.

“And what if I want to fuck you?” Defiant. Angry.

“Then I’m yours, sir.”

Sherlock is breathing heavily, almost gasping for air. John watches as Sherlock’s feet appear in his field of view. Feels Sherlock’s big, warm hand knit itself into the short strands of his hair. Feels him tug. He tips his head back and finds Sherlock looming over him, his face snarled, his eyes dark.

“Do you remember your safe word, boy?”

“Yes,” John breathes, pain pricking his scalp from where Sherlock grips him, too hard.

“Get on the bed.”

Sherlock releases him suddenly, stalking away, and John gets to his feet. Climbs on the bed. Kneels once more. Waits.

A bottle hits the bed beside him, skidding into John’s calf. “Sit up against the headboard and get yourself ready.”

John settles himself against the padded headboard, pushing the pillows aside and gets his fingers wet. John stares straight ahead while Sherlock prowls the perimeter of the bed. Waves of pain pulse outwards from him, transmuted into anger, they roll over John, making his heartbeat skitter and sweat break out on his skin.

John touches himself, fingers preparing him, comfortable with his body, with his limits, as Sherlock mutters darkly from the edges, slinging insults and orders at John erratically. He pulls at himself until he’s erect and then climbs on the bed, clambering over John’s body to press his hot dry lips to John’s. The kiss is feverish and rough, claiming. John yields to it, tries to soften it as best he can, but Sherlock is possessed with some demon, some old memory driving this scene, and his breathing is ragged, as if with sobs, when he pushes away and lines himself up down below. John must make some sound as he feels the head of Sherlock’s cock press against him and it makes Sherlock’s head snap up, his eyes, animal and black, lock onto John’s, and his whole face crumples.

“Pineapple,” Sherlock says, squeezing his eyes shut tight as tears begin to track out of them. “Pineapple,” gasping, as he folds himself down onto the mattress, his hands fisting in the sheets, face hidden, turned away from John.

John murmurs and whispers, gentles and soothes him until Sherlock unbends and lies next to John on the bed, his face buried in John’s neck. John holds him until his shoulders stop shaking, until his breathing evens out. For a while John thinks he’s fallen asleep, but eventually Sherlock peels his face away and props himself up to look down at John. John looks up at him, taking in the puffy, swollen eyes and the flushed cheeks. John cups his cheek tenderly and leans up to kiss him. Sherlock’s mouth is salty and soft now, sweet.

“You would have let me?” Sherlock whispers as John kisses his cheeks and his eyebrows. “You would have let me…fuck you?”

John pulls back, settling his head back on the pillow. “Of course. Why?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “None of them, they wouldn’t have—never.”

“Is that what you want?” John asks, ducking his head so that Sherlock will meet his eyes. They’re washed out and red. John’s chest swells. He wants to ease him.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock says, honestly. “I’ve never—“

“Ok.” John waits to see if he’ll go on, but he’s silent, eyes downcast. Shy? Embarrassed? “This was a lot. I’m sorry. I think we should just get dinner…”

“No.” Sherlock presses his hand to John’s shoulder to keep him from getting up, his fingers splaying across John’s scar. “No. You asked me to show you.”

John starts to protest, he’d used their safe word after all, but Sherlock stops him. “I want to. You asked me what I want and I want to. I want to show you.”

John relaxes beneath him, willing. Sherlock gazes back at him wonderingly. “You confound me, John Watson. I’ve never met anyone like you.” His mouth twists into a rueful sort of smile. “It drives me mad, to be quite honest.”

John chuckles and reaches for him, strokes his hand down his waist to rest his open palm atop his hip.

Sherlock keeps looking down at him and, seeing the remnants of his tears in his wet lashes, John feels a stab of regret and worry and sadness. John keeps his tone nonjudgmental. “Was that how it was? Before? It’s all right if it was. Do you want to be talked to like that?”

Sherlock jerks his chin. “Sometimes. Humiliation, punishment, sometimes it felt exciting. But.” Sherlock’s eyebrows knot in the centre. “It makes me angry too, that you’re different. I don’t know what to expect. I keep waiting for you to show your true colours. I suppose I was trying to provoke you.”

John’s heart sinks. It explains so much. “So you couldn’t trust me either,” he says. “You thought I was putting on an act.”

“Not all of them were like Moriarty. I’ve been with men who liked to spoil me, who treated me kindly, but…” Sherlock trails off.

“But?” John prompts.

“But it’s always been about their pleasure first. That was the dynamic. It’s the dynamic I know. I still don’t completely understand what you mean, by this being an equal deal.”

John squeezes his hand around Sherlock’s warm skin and nuzzles their noses together. “Oh, lovely boy, thank you. I see now, how it was confusing to you. I wasn’t as clear as I thought. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Just…can you explain it more? What it would look like?”

“I think Sherlock, that much of this confusion is stemming from the fact that I have been feeling as if you were entering into this arrangement out of duress, or, a lack of options. It occurred to me, belatedly, I regret, that Moriarty might be actively pursuing you and that you felt yourself to be in some danger. Is that a fair assumption?”

“Yes. But—“

“You don’t have to tell me why yet, unless you’re ready. Like I said before, I don’t want to build a foundation on lies. Are you ready to tell me now?”

Sherlock hesitates and John’s heart leaps a bit, hope surging, but a moment later he shakes his head.

“I accept that. And, just to be clear, you want to continue to have a physical relationship with me, with the understanding that at any time, my protection is available without it?”

“Yes.” Sherlock’s cheeks are pink and his mouth inches up into a tentative smile. John must kiss him then, joy at this arrangement being re-engaged glowing warm between them, so he does.

“Brilliant,” John sighs, lying back against the pillow, contented, Sherlock above him, cheeks pinker and smile wider than before. “What do you want our relationship to be like, Sherlock?”

“I’d rather you explained what you think it could be like. Give me an example.”

“All I want is for it to be based in honesty. With that as our starting point things will work for both of us.”

“But I like it when you take control. I like trying to please you. I feel like I’m not supposed to do that now.”

John shakes his head, running his hand down the outside of Sherlock’s thigh and then back up. “I like both of those things too. I just want you to take your pleasure seriously, Sherlock. I don’t want you to put mine above yours.”

Sherlock smiles at him shyly, coyly.

“Then with permission, sir, I’d like a second chance. To show you.” John shivers at the deep timbre of plaintive suggestion in Sherlock’s voice.

“Permission granted,” John says, eyes tracking Sherlock as he eagerly arranges himself between John’s legs. John spreads them wider, heels dragging against the sheets, arching up to meet him as Sherlock cages his arms to either side of John’s head. His mouth is warm, his tongue pushing inside insistently. Uncharacteristic, in fact, John thinks, but then realises that they’ve switched positions again. Sherlock is John, John is Sherlock. John once more allows himself to sink into the role, giving up control. Melting into the mattress as Sherlock lays the length of his body against John’s, pinning him with his weight.

Sherlock spends no small time kissing John boneless. John enjoys the change in Sherlock, revelling in the assertive thrust of his tongue and the command he takes over John’s mouth. John must be doing something right if this is a pantomime of his efforts.

“You love the way I kiss you, don’t you?” Sherlock murmurs, moving his mouth down John’s throat. John moans his agreement, his hips pressing up. “You like the way my beard feels. The way I suck on your tongue.”John reminds himself to take notes, even as his body is lighting up beneath Sherlock as he begins to suck a hard, hot brand into the base of his neck. “You love the way my beard makes all the blood come tingling up to the surface of your skin. You’d love to feel it all over your body, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir, oh, God,” John gasps, as Sherlock drags his face and his slippery wet mouth down John’s chest to his nipples. Unfortunately for John, they’re not sensitive at all, but he pays attention to the way Sherlock moves his tongue, the way he flickers it, the way he flattens it, the way he is playing with the other one with his fingers, kneading, pinching, rubbing. John would like to fit a pair of nipple clamps on him and see if he can make him come just from that alone. He tucks that away for future use, as Sherlock returns his attention to the hickey he’d begun earlier and nibbles it with his teeth.

“You want me to mark you as my own,” Sherlock murmurs against John’s stinging skin, smoothing his soft lips over it, before sucking at it one last time. John shouts at the ceiling, head thrown back, his blood pounding up to throb against his skin. Sherlock sits back, admiring the deep purple mark. Satisfied, he runs his hands down John’s body, scrutinising him in that intense fashion he has that makes John feel as if he were under a microscope, as if he were cataloguing every mole, hair, or stretch mark.

“You love when I look at you like this,” Sherlock says, making John’s chest constrict, winding up tight tight tight so bloody tight he can’t breathe. Because Sherlock is blushing. Christ, it’s so lovely when he does that. He’s blushing because he’s exposed and he knows John loves it when he gives him these tiny pieces. And John is beaming up at him because he’s proud and so _grateful_.

John wants to say, _You are so beautiful_ , but he holds back at the last second as Sherlock’s eyes meet his with an impact that knocks the air out of John’s lungs because there is another piece, John didn’t think he would be so lucky but—

“I look at you like this, and you know you’re safe.”

“Oh—“ John starts to lean up, lungs crushed, no air, but Sherlock lays his hand on John’s chest and fits his mouth over John’s to silence him.

They kiss and they kiss and they kiss, until their bodies are tangled up together, until their breath is shared between them, passed back and forth, arms wrapped tight around one another, legs interleaved. This is new and they’re both enjoying the feeling of their bare bodies pressed tight together. Cocks slide against each other, silky hot and sticky. Leg hair catches and pulls. Feet rub up the backs of calves, electric sparks igniting between them. Bellies heave against one another. Hands move, restless, trying to touch and clutch as much unexplored skin as they can. Emotion fills both of them until they are drums, reverberating with feeling, too big to be spoken, only communicable through touch, through kiss.

Kiss.

Kiss.

Kiss.

John could die happy. He’s delirious a bit. He didn’t think this game would go quite this well. Especially after the way it had started, but Sherlock is here with him, really here. Not somewhere else, not some cold place calculating his next move. He’s here with John, fully present and they’re connecting.

It feels so good that John loses himself for long minutes, is full up with pure unrelenting sensation so it’s a moment before he realises that Sherlock has moved down his body and his face is currently framed between John’s thighs, which Sherlock is parting, spreading, to get at, to lick at…

“Fuck,” John says, jackknifed up to sitting. Shocks crackling through him. “Are you, do you, are you sure?”

Sherlock, his hair sticking up all over, groans, dipping back down. “You have been waiting a fucking age for this,” he says, pulling, and John is falling back, his arse scooting down the bed, until he is close enough to feel the warm damp curl of Sherlock’s breath on his skin.

John lies there and stares up at the ceiling and a fluttery elated feeling takes flight in his stomach as Sherlock begins to kiss and suck and lick him in earnest. John has been fucked before. He has been fucked numerous times. He likes it. No. He fucking loves it, but he doesn’t think, his mind stretches, but can’t quite reach. He hasn’t. No one has ever eaten him out before, he’s sure. John loves doing this with his boys. They lose their god damn minds most of the time. But. Oh, God. Now he understands. It feels incredible. It feels, oh, oh, John pushes down, trying to get closer to Sherlock’s tongue. He’s making noises, he is. _Take notes_ , his mind reminds him, admonishing. _You’re Sherlock_. And fuck. Fuck it’s hard. Because. Because Sherlock’s tongue is pushing it’s way inside him, slippery and firm and perfect.

John shivers all over, moaning, twisting, being held in place by Sherlock’s giant fucking hands as he tries to get closer.

Looking down the length of his body John sees his heels dug into Sherlock’s shoulder blades, his thighs pressed to his ears, his cock thick and red with blood and dripping on his belly, and Sherlock’s thatch of wild black curls, face buried in John’s arse, John’s hands wrist deep in their roiling depths.

John has to bite back an order. Has to hang on with the last of his wits. He wants to tell Sherlock to stop tongue fucking him or he’ll come and Sherlock had wanted, he had, he’d wanted to fuck John. But somehow Sherlock gets it. He’s there, oh, John is reaching for him, pulling him down, and he tastes of musky skin and lube, terrible, but John can’t stop, can't stop kissing him if he tried, so Sherlock fumbles around for the bottle, discarded somewhere in the mess of sheets and duvet.

“I’m ready,” John gasps, when he hears the telltale click of the bottle. “You don’t have to—“

“Are you—?”

“Yes. Now. Please.”

“..sure? Just let me—“

“No. Now.”

“You want, you want me to fuck you.”

But John is past talking. He wraps his hand around Sherlock’s lube slick cock and shoves down.

Then it’s easy. John can finally breathe. Can bear down on Sherlock’s cock and breathe and take him inside, take him deeper.

Sherlock’s eyes: wide and blue above him. Not washed out. Not red. So clear and blue and staring into John as John spreads his legs to gather him closer, to hook his legs behind him, to bring him close enough to kiss. And kiss.

John is tangled up in who is who. All he knows is it feels incredible. He loves this. The ecstasy of sex, the headiness of connection.

“You… you’ve wanted this…so badly,” Sherlock says, pressing his forehead to John’s, giving him pieces. Pieces of himself. And John makes a sobbing sound in his throat, as Sherlock thrusts his hips. And kisses him so sweetly. So softly. Tenderness is an aching knot in John’s throat.

“I’ve wanted this,” John agrees, quiet, their words private, just between them. Their noses brushing, their lips touching in between. "I've wanted this so so badly." He has. It’s true. So true. He’s wanted Sherlock like this from the very beginning.

“You feel so good,” Sherlock says, pushing up onto his hands, eyes fluttering, closing, rolling back as his cock plunges and stretches and fills John. "You're perfect for me. Such a good boy. My beautiful, perfect boy."

Sherlock.

As John.

_He wants this_ , John thinks, through the muzzy orgasmic brink of thought he is perched on.

_He wants me to do this to him_ , John thinks, touching Sherlock as Sherlock (John) kisses him (Sherlock).

_He wants me to give him pieces, like this. To fuck him and kiss him and treat him reverently like this. To mark him. To claim him. To hold him. To make him feel like this._

_To make him feel safe._

_And cherished._

Unleashed from having to direct, to oversee, to take care of, safe in the knowledge that Sherlock is telling him, showing him explicitly what he wants and needs from John, John lets go.

And with Sherlock’s (John’s) mouth on his (Sherlock’s) John feels the tide wash through him, carrying him over into sun-struck blissed out obliterating white.


	8. Chapter 8

_Nothing yet. It’s like trying to nail an eel to the ground. We’re still looking. You get anything?_

_No. I’ll be in touch if I do._ Sherlock texts, automatically deleting the thread from DI Lestrade as he walks back into the bedroom. He thinks, belatedly, that maybe he doesn’t need to do that anymore.

Not after last night.

He considers what it would be like to tell John about it all. He feels like he's getting to the point where he won't be able to keep a secret of this magnitude for much longer without damaging the trust they're building. John is patient and he's not demanding Sherlock reveal all of his secrets at once, but it makes Sherlock's stomach twinge a bit to wonder what John will think of him when he knows about Sherlock's past.

The shades have been pulled open since Sherlock crept out of bed to shower. The room is flooded with warm, summery light, and there is John, golden and sleepy and smiling from the cloud of duvet in the centre of the bed. He sits up against the headboard, bare chested, his fingers curled around an espresso cup. Sherlock, his heart thumping hard, stills for a moment in the bathroom doorway, ensnared by the sight of him.

“Come ‘ere,” John says, voice husky and low with desire. Sherlock’s body rings with a sharp, biting pang, that familiar achy longing filling the centre of his bones, like a sweet tooth with a craving that begs to be sated.

Sherlock passes the dresser, which is littered with Chinese takeout boxes, remnants of the dinner that they ate in bed last night, and clambers onto the bed. John’s body is hot on Sherlock’s cool skin as Sherlock straddles his lap, his arm curling around Sherlock’s waist to draw him in so that their hips fit snugly against each other.

John hums in appreciation and tucks his face into Sherlock’s throat. “Christ, you smell fucking incredible,” he whispers, rubbing his beard over Sherlock’s freshly shaven skin. Sherlock makes an involuntary sound at the sensation, skin prickling, tingling, as John nuzzles at him, pressing wet, sucking kisses to his Adam’s apple, his thudding pulse point, and to the soft patch of skin just below his ear. Sherlock’s curls are still damp and sticky with product across his shoulders as he tips his head back to give John better access.

“You gave me a marvellous gift last night, Sherlock,” John says, as he sets his lips to Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock trembles against him, feeling a surge of heat flood down his body, thinking of how open he had been, how ridiculously, shamefully honest he had been. “My sweet boy, my perfect boy, I’m so grateful and honoured and I want to show you that I was listening. Will you let me?”

Sherlock’s marrow is throbbing with how much he wants it, but he’s speechless, breathless, overcome, as he so often is when he’s in John’s arms, and so all he can do is nod helplessly. John lifts his mouth to Sherlock and Sherlock bends to touch them together, moaning at the soft slick slide of John’s lips under his. This man may perplex Sherlock utterly, but he also moors him in a way no one else has ever done for Sherlock. Something has shifted. That unnameable thing he has been searching for from this dynamic for so long has finally been offered to him, freely, no strings. Sherlock has been set before a feast and told to take what he likes and he doesn’t yet know how to do it. Thank God he has John to guide him.

Because of course John listened to everything Sherlock said, and everything Sherlock was unable to say, was only able to show him, last night.

Here he is, kissing Sherlock the way Sherlock had showed him. So carefully, but with a firm command. It makes Sherlock’s mind turn off, makes it go beautifully blank. He is sensation, nothing else. The bright aching yearning radiates out through him, consuming him in pulsing light.

“I’d like you to surrender yourself to me, Sherlock,” John says, his strong hands cupping Sherlock’s ribs, his blue eyes canted up at Sherlock through blunt dark lashes, all of him bathed in warm honeyed light. The words work like magic on Sherlock and he feels them flow through his body, relaxing him.

“I surrender, sir,” he whispers, winding his fingers up into John’s hair, as John kisses him deeply in response.

John strokes Sherlock’s sides with his palms. “You gave me two gifts last night, Sherlock, did you know?” Sherlock nods, shyly, their faces so close together that John’s features blur. “Course you did,” John says, and his huff of laughter rasps warmly across Sherlock’s cheek. “You clever genius, of course you knew none of my boys had ever done that for me before.”

“They were probably afraid to,” Sherlock says, running the tip of his nose across John’s left brow. John’s hands tense against Sherlock’s waist and he pulls back just far enough for their eyes to meet. John searches Sherlock for the truth of this and, finding it, nods, mouth set thoughtfully.

“I suppose that must be true,” John says eventually, accepting this in that befuddling way of his, resuming his stroking, but this time up Sherlock’s back. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Sherlock. If there’s something you’d like to do with me, or, to me, you should always feel free to broach it.”

“You’d like being tied up,” Sherlock blurts out, cheeks flaring with heat. “You’d love it, sir, I can tell. Not being able to touch me when you wanted, me being the one in control of giving you pleasure, showing you what a good student I was, it would be the ultimate show of how much you trusted me, giving yourself wholly into my hands.” John’s gaze is dark and intense and Sherlock balks a bit, looking down, whispering, “You like to play with vulnerability, sir. I don’t think you’ve had much chance to explore the edges of your own.”

Sherlock has no warning before John’s mouth is on his, hot and crushing. His tongue in Sherlock’s mouth, licking in, thrusting deep. Sherlock’s blood is sluggish with desire, moving treacly sweet and thick, but it catches fire at way John responds to Sherlock’s suggestion.

“There’s no end to your brilliance, Sherlock,” John murmurs, between each intoxicating kiss. “You see me so clearly, I wonder at it sometimes.”

“Oh,” Sherlock gasps, rocking his hips and pressing them closer together. A thin layer of high-thread count cotton is all that separates them.

“I want to reward you, Sherlock. I want you to sit on my face and I want you to ride my tongue.”

Tiny shock waves tremor through Sherlock, breaking beneath his skin and eddying out at the words. He curls his toes into the sheets and clutches at John’s head, the crinkly hairs on John’s chest snapping electrically against his nipples.

“Come then,” John says, manoeuvring Sherlock’s unwieldy limbs. “Turn around. Kneel up…”

Sherlock is careful with his knees as he positions himself over John’s now supine form, his feet sliding beneath John’s pillow, soles up.

“There’s that glorious arse,” John growls appreciatively, taking two handfuls and squeezing. “Christ, it’s a plump, juicy thing, isn’t it?” John’s hands move freely over Sherlock’s skin, rubbing them until Sherlock’s cheeks are warming up, his knees slipping wider as he lowers just a bit, pressing back into the rough handling.

“I can smell you,” John says, his hands sliding up to curl around Sherlock’s hips and bring him closer. Sherlock can feel the movement of John’s breath as he breathes in deeply through his nose. “I can always smell you when you want me like this, Sherlock. It makes my mouth water and I itch to touch you. When you were in my office sometimes I could smell it, your longing, and it’d make my cock hard and my hands tense. I’d have to keep myself from reaching for you and giving you relief right there on the rug.”

Sherlock trembles, his thighs tensed as he holds himself still. John is nuzzling his nose against Sherlock’s left cheek and skimming the bristles of his moustache across the line where Sherlock’s arse meets his thigh, his lips, slick, ghosting over it, over and over.

“It makes me hungry for you,” John goes on, touching Sherlock tortuously slow, darting his tongue out to lick across the sharp bright line his beard is drawing, making all the blood surge up to the surface. “It makes me want to taste you. Makes me want to _devour_ you.”

Sherlock groans and his knees slip wider, spreading himself, lowering himself, to get closer to the wet heat of John’s mouth.

“Eager, aren’t we?” John chuckles, nosing up into the seam and just letting his breath stream out over where Sherlock wants him. Sherlock whines a bit at the tease. “I won’t make you wait any longer, darling; come here; let Daddy give you his mouth.”

And then John’s hands are parting Sherlock’s cheeks and there’s no more teasing, no more fannying about, there’s only the broad wet glide of John’s tongue over the throbbing entrance to Sherlock’s body and the long, shocked moan that it elicits.

Sherlock’s eyes close on the room. One hand descends behind him and anchors itself in John’s hair. The other rests in a fist atop his thigh, not letting himself touch his hard, straining cock. Not just yet anyway. He wants this to last. Wants to enjoy the brusque feeling of John’s beard on the inside of his thighs. How it lights him up inside, sets his nerves sparkling. Wants to savour the way John’s tongue licks at him, applying pressure here, flicking there, lying flat now as Sherlock moves his hips and runs it up the crack of his arse and then back down.

John’s fingers knead Sherlock’s cheeks, holding him open so that John can suckle gently at the rim of Sherlock’s hole, can rub the hair on his cheek against the grain, setting Sherlock’s tissue paper skin on fire. Sherlock squirms to get away, but John chases him, holding him, and does it to the other thigh until Sherlock is crying out.

John settles back to his work, nose buried between Sherlock’s cheeks, nudging at his opening as he dips lower to lick over Sherlock’s perineum and taste the salty sweat beading beneath Sherlock’s heavy sac. The tip of John’s nose probes Sherlock’s entrance, distracting him, making him press back, and John responds, returning his mouth there, to set his tongue working at the pursed ring.

Sherlock ruts mindlessly, his cock bobbing in the warm shaft of sunlight spilling across the bed. He can see John’s erection curved beneath the sheet, the round reddish tip just peaking out. Sherlock wonders if he should suck him off, but the thought is fleeting. He can’t concentrate enough to work his own cock, let alone give John the attention he deserves in the state he’s in right now. He lets his eyes slip shut again and sinks into the sensate darkness where he is awash in texture and sound and emotion.

But John stops. Suddenly.

“Sherlock,” he says, voice hoarse and deep. “I need you on your hands and knees.”

It’s another few moments of clumsy bumbling, as they get re-situated, with Sherlock draped over two stacked pillows, his arse tilted up, John knelt behind him.

“Sweet merciful fuck,” John says, low and hushed, shuffling up on his knees until his thighs are pressed to the inside of Sherlock’s and nudging them wider. “Oh, God, Sherlock, you’re beautiful.” Awestruck. Sherlock feels the blush travel all the way up from the small of his back to the top of his head at the praise. “Fuck.” John’s finger traces Sherlock’s hole, slowly. “I want you so badly.”

“Then take me,” Sherlock says, turning his head to look at John over his shoulder.

John bites his lip and shuts his eyes, his cock hanging so full and heavy, swaying with the weight of clearly wanting to do just that, resplendent in its grandeur. Sherlock wants it to carve a path right through him.

After a moment John shakes his head, his eyes, on the other hand, not losing any of their dilated blackness as he bends once more to attend to Sherlock as he promised.

John’s mouth is sure and practiced. He knows just how to lick Sherlock to melt him into a puddle of moaning goo. Sherlock’s poor engorged cock is trapped in pillow down, its softness not providing nearly enough friction to help as Sherlock thrusts his arse back against John’s mouth, only to be pushed forward again into clouds. It’s maddening and Sherlock’s mind scrabbles for purchase in a sea of sensation.

Finds none.

With Sherlock positioned the way he is, with his legs spread as wide as they will go, John has better access to him and he uses it to great effect.

He sharpens his tongue to a point and enters Sherlock slowly, pushing his inexorable way in. Sherlock’s body spasms around him, involuntarily clutching at him, gently, in a rolling clenching motion. John begins to fuck him with the tip, bobbing his head to get as deep as he can as Sherlock buries his head in the sheets and cries out. John leans back and spits on Sherlock's hole, running his fingertips around the swelling rim. When he returns his tongue to Sherlock, his beard brushing against the inside of Sherlock’s arse cheeks is excruciatingly pleasurable, sending stinging jolts of ecstatic pain striking out through him. Sherlock’s toes cramp he curls them so tight. His breath comes in short gasping bursts, his heart beating wildly in his ears.

“John!” he’s exclaiming. He hasn’t called him that before. Sherlock furrows his brow at it, strange on his tongue, but he can’t conjure anything else. This man who is turning Sherlock inside out, his hame is John, and Sherlock’s mouth forms it over and over as he gets the most thorough tongue fucking of his life. He can feel his orgasm building hot at the tops of his thighs as John slides a finger in beneath the prodding thrust of his tongue, curving it down until his fingertip is pressing down on Sherlock’s prostate like it’s a launch button.

It pushes a roaring annihilating wall of feeling up his body and he comes, fingers knotting against the mattress, open mouth shouting insensibly into the sheets, cock emptying out into goosefeathers.

And then, as Sherlock comes slowly back to himself, he is aware of John wrapping Sherlock’s beard burned cheeks around the thick hot shaft of his cock and thrusting into the slippery tight channel, swearing colourfully above and behind Sherlock, until mere moments later Sherlock feels the wet splash of John’s come spatter across his back.

When John can he lifts himself off of Sherlock and fetches a flannel, cleaning Sherlock up before he lies down on the bed next to him and wraps his arm around his waist.

“How was that then?” He asks cheekily.

Sherlock doesn’t even try and equivocate. “Superb,” he says, leaning in to steal a kiss from John’s smug, pink, smiling mouth.

John hums, pressing kisses to Sherlock’s forehead and brushing them across his lashes on his way down to the tip of his nose. Settling back down against the pillow after, he says, “I suppose we need to head into the office soon. Do you mind if I shower first or would you like—“

Sherlock cuts him off by levering up and over John to grab something off the bedside table. Flouncing back down onto his side he sets it on the mattress between them.

John’s mouth cracks sideways in a wide grin and his eyes are a deep, deep blue when they flicker up to meet Sherlock’s.

“I think we have time for one more thing, don’t you?”


	9. Chapter 9

John is thumbing through messages on his phone when he notices the pensive silence emanating from the seat beside him.

Sherlock sits with his elbow propped up on the windowsill, absent-mindedly running his fingertips across his lips, eyes blankly taking in the busy New York pavement. They were stuck in traffic, again, the Novarsky offices mere blocks away. Outside the sun shines brightly, reflecting off shopfront windows. Despite the smell of raw sewage and exhaust that sometimes choked the city air, it looks inviting.

“You all right?” John asks, quiet.

Sherlock blinks, eyes clearing, and nods.

“You’re not uncomfortable?” John checks, “because we can always take it out.”

“No. It’s fine,” Sherlock says, and the deep rumble of his voice that fills the cab still sometimes takes John by surprise. It resonates in John’s chest, a faint echoing reverberation. John likes the way it makes him feel, the rock rough scrape of it along his senses, making him clench inside, making him aroused.

“Want to walk the rest of the way?”

Sherlock’s lips twitch at this suggestion and he looks at John slightly askance as if he is surprised and amused that John has posed it.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t think CEOs walked with the rest of us plebeians.” The teasing glitter of his pale eyes shining at John from beneath his long dark lashes takes John’s breath away. Affection melts down his navel in a slow warm cascade.

“Occasionally the day is just too fine not to risk it,” John says dryly, and leans forward to tap on the glass partition that divides them from the driver. John lets him know they’ll be getting out and then scoots across the seat until he is pressed along the length of Sherlock’s thigh. The boy’s eyes drop to John’s lips and his breathing goes uneven. John sets his hand to Sherlock’s knee, fingers resting against the inside seam of his trousers. The heat from Sherlock’s skin flushes against John’s palm, hot.

John means to simply reach across him and open the door, but the heady green scent of Sherlock’s aftershave overwhelms John and he can’t resist sliding his other hand into the soft hair that curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck and tugging him down for a kiss.

He’s a vision when John finally releases him, cheeks rosy, lips plummy and pink, his pupils ringed by a thin nimbus of silvery blue.

“Open the door, Sherlock,” John says, and feels gratified when Sherlock has to visibly gather his wits about him in order to obey.

They step out into the warmth of a beatific June day. The temperature is rising, it will be stifling later, but the morning air is still crisp and the sky above them that peeks through the skyscrapers is a clear bright blue.

They fall into step beside each other, Sherlock obviously measuring and matching his stride to John’s shorter one. As they walk John can feel Sherlock ruminating on something. He can pick out the signs now, behind the cold stoic facade. His mind is whirring behind that cool gaze that he fixes straight ahead of him. John won’t pry, but he hopes, some day, that Sherlock will choose to share some of his thoughts with John. It therefore shocks John a bit that there on the pavement Sherlock decides to do just that.

“When I met Moriarty I was an addict.” He doesn’t look to John to see how this lands, he plunges ahead. “When I couldn’t afford cocaine I concocted things to make in my chem lab at school. I sold the extras. I met M because word got back to him that I was infringing on one of his enterprises.

“M’s man in Oxford was a plumber named Mars who was double-timing M and moving product for his brother back in Poland. When M’s thugs came to execute justice I offered this information to them in exchange for not tossing my body in the Thames. They brought me to M and he made me an offer I felt I couldn’t refuse.”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and glances down at John, finally daring to gauge his reaction. John stops walking and waits until Sherlock meets his gaze.

“I worked for him,” Sherlock says, not letting John get a word in. “I vetted his employees, the people coming to him for help. I deduced their secrets, I broke into their offices, their homes, their cars. I was good at it. I was his tool. And in return for steady access to the best drugs in the world and sex I didn’t think I could live without, I enabled him to cause a lot of suffering.”

John lays his hand on Sherlock’s forearm, needing to touch him. “Thank you for telling me.”

Sherlock swallows as if it hurt to do so. “That’s not everything.”

John nods, watching him: the pained furrow between his brows, the worry in his eyes. “Ok. Tell me.”

“Death won’t be good enough for me. He’ll want to make me pay for leaving him. You’re in danger for taking me in. He’s an extremely jealous, possessive man. I’m sorry you didn’t know that before you agreed to this.” Sherlock holds his palms up between them, looking like he might cry. “I didn’t know, the type of man you were before this started. I needed protection..I needed _time_ , and I didn’t know. I didn’t—” He lifts his hands and pushes them through his curls in agitation.

“Sherlock—“

“I’m working with the police to try and catch him; there’s a DI with the Met—“

“Sherlock—“

“He was investigating the murder of one of M’s associates and I’ve given him all the information I had, but M might as well not exist. He leaves no trace, has others do his dirty work for him. I have serious doubts about whether Lestrade will even be able to do anything. And—“

“Sherlock, stop.” John grips him by the shoulders and forces Sherlock to look at him. John needs him to calm down. There’s a frenetic panicked energy gripping him and his breathing is coming short and hard. John’s afraid he’ll descend into a full blown anxiety attack if he isn’t interrupted. “We’ll figure it out, all right? All I need you to do for me right now is breathe. Please. For me, Sherlock. Breathe.”

Sherlock’s eyes slide shut and his shoulders slump a bit, his body listing slightly towards John’s. John wishes, ardently, that they weren’t in the middle of a busy street, that they had privacy enough so that John might touch him, soothe him. An ache fills him at the inadequacy of what he can offer Sherlock.

When Sherlock—calmer, though visibly paler—opens his eyes again, John takes his elbow and leads him forward.

“Do you think you’re being watched?”

Sherlock nods, grim. “I haven’t been able to make them, but if I know M then he’s keeping very close tabs on me.” Sherlock grimaces. “And you.”

“What do you think he’s waiting for?”

Sherlock looks miserable. “I honestly don’t know. I didn’t expect to survive the week when I left.”

John feels a cold chill lodge in his spine. This is far more serious than he had first thought. If Sherlock holds Moriarty’s secrets then he poses a threat to the man that no one else in the world did. He had no reason to keep Sherlock alive so why was he?

“You must serve some kind of purpose to him,” John muses aloud, as they stop at a stoplight. Up ahead the Novarsky building sparkles in the sunlight.

Sherlock’s mouth twists as if this is the very thought that has been plaguing him. “Yes, but what?” He looks down at John. “The only thing I can think of is…you.”

John is taken aback. “Me?”

Sherlock shrugs. “When I asked my parents to get me a job at Watson Tech, M went quiet for a little while.”

“But…why?”

“I don’t know.” He obviously hates that he doesn’t. John is quiet as they cross the street and enter the office building, his mind racing over this new information.

Inside the elevator, Sherlock says, “I should go. I should have, already. But, I honestly never expected to—“

John turns on him, fierce. “I don’t want to hear you suggest it again. Not on my part. If you want to leave, Sherlock, you’re free, but I’m not going to stop protecting you from him just because it’s a little more dangerous than it was before.”

“It’s not a little more dangerous, John, he could kill you.”

“I’m a soldier, Sherlock, I can take care of myself.”

“If he hurt you…” Sherlock looked at him, despairing, helpless. “It would be precisely his brand of revenge.”

“Sherlock, do you trust me?” John asks, stepping close to him, crowding him back against the elevator wall. Sherlock, eyes skittering over John’s face, trying to read his mood, nods. “Good.” John backs off, pulling his jacket straight as the doors slide open. He steps off, confident that Sherlock is on his heels as he makes his way to his makeshift office inside Irene’s.

 

**********

 

More meetings fill the morning. John can tell that Irene is frustrated with him, unable to pin him down on which way he’s leaning, but John doesn’t care. On paper everything looks perfect. On paper this merger makes fiscal sense. On paper this deal will give him enough money to retire at the age of 35. More importantly it will give him a chance to live the life he’d wanted for himself instead of taking over his father’s path. But it was exactly the jarring perfection of it that was giving John a sense of unease and making him look closer. His team back home was poring over the audit and commissioning their own. There was something wrong at Novarsky, Inc. John just needed to find the evidence that would confirm it.

And if they couldn’t…

Well, John might get exactly what he wants.

Out.

So for now he sits in the meetings and makes friendly. This last one before lunch is on the future of med tech and where the company plans to strike ground next. The woman at the front of the room is explaining how Watson Tech fits into their plans. It is all polished, all glossy, all front. Much like Irene herself. Beside him Sherlock is silent, pale, closed off. John doesn't take the amount of courage it had to take for Sherlock to reveal all of that to John lightly. John knows that that level of vulnerability can leave one feeling shaken, especially if it's something they're ashamed about, which Sherlock obviously is.

John picks up his phone.

Types: _Penny for your thoughts?_

Watching as Sherlock’s screen lights up on the table and the tilt of his head as he skims his eyes over the screen.

He doesn’t look up at John as he picks up his mobile and begins to tap out a message with his thumb.

_I’m thinking, sir, that I want you to bend me over this table and fuck me._

When their eyes meet after John has read what Sherlock wrote there’s a challenge in Sherlock’s gaze that John recognises as a distancing mechanism. If they are just fucking then they can’t be caring about each other. The risk, of going deeper into the connection they’re building, isn’t lost on John. They stand at a crossroads. They can either stall things emotionally until Moriarty is dealt with or they can truly commit to one another and raise the stakes of what could be lost if things went wrong.

John picks up his mobile. _I’d like nothing more, Sherlock, but I think I’d rather wait until I had you all to myself. Is the plug uncomfortable?_

_No._

The three dots pulse. John waits.

_But I need this, sir. I need your cock._

_…_

_…_

_I’ve been so patient. I’ve waited all morning. Please, sir. I need you._

John glances up from the latent desperation in those words as there’s a smattering of applause. The woman at the front of the room smiles and bows her head and then chairs are being rolled backwards and people begin to file out. John chats for a moment with one of his VPs, but otherwise stays seated. Sherlock watches him closely, then gets up and locks the door after the last person has left the room. Then he walks to the bank of floor to ceiling windows that lines the other side of the conference room. Places his big, pale hands flat on the glass, feet spread shoulder width apart, and bows his back just slightly.

John can clearly see the impression of the plug’s base outlined against the tight fit of Sherlock’s dark grey trousers.

Pushing back his chair from the table John walks slowly into the shaft of hot buttery sunlight that cuts in. For a moment he just admires Sherlock’s form. The long clean lines of his body, rigid, muscles straining against bespoke clothing that has been tailored to fit Sherlock like a glove. His inky black curls shine in the bright light, sunbeams coiling through the dark strands like liquid gold, his fingers tense against the glass, pads digging in. 

“Remove your jacket,” John says, breaking the hypnotic silence that had descended in the wake of the others leaving the room. It’s just them, suspended in blue sky, high above the city.

Sherlock straightens and John helps him, catching it as Sherlock shrugs it down his arms. The wool and silk lining are warm against John’s hands as he walks to the table and lays it down. As John walks back to him, dragging a chair behind him, Sherlock has resumed the same position, arse presented to John. Despite the fact that John wants to get on his knees right then and some his face to Sherlock and take in that smell that’s already making his mouth flood, John resists and instead positions the chair where he wants it.

Stepping up to Sherlock’s right side John begins to unbutton Sherlock’s cuff. The heat rolls of the glass in an intense wave, engulfing them. John feels sweat break out along his hairline and under his arms. The scent of sweat and musk rises between them. John watches as a bead of sweat rolls down Sherlock’s temple and tracks down his cheek. It bursts in a salt-sharp brine across his tastebuds when he sets his tongue to it and licks. The sound Sherlock makes is like glass grinding, torn from deep in Sherlock’s chest.

John, cock thickening against his flies, walks around to the other side to attend to Sherlock’s other cuff.

Once it’s loosened John ducks beneath Sherlock’s arm and fits himself into the space between Sherlock’s body and the glass window pane. It’s like being pressed between two heat sources, the sun beating down on John’s back, the rangy heat of Sherlock’s body throbbing against his front. John sets to work on Sherlock’s shirt front.

Up this close Sherlock’s eyes are a million shades of blue and silver. For the first time John can see the aurora of yellow that surrounds his pupils and turns the very centre of his eyes a brilliant aquamarine. Surrounded by thick dark lashes they stare down at John, his face hovering mere centimetres away. John can smell the faint tang of coffee on his breath as it slips ragged from between his parted lips. John traces the cupid’s bow of Sherlock’s upper lip with his eyes, remembering the plush soft yield of it. 

John eases him out of his shirt and lets it drop to the floor behind him as he kneels and begins to untie Sherlock’s shoes.

Now he’s even with Sherlock’s lap, the boy's cock pushing against the front of his trousers in a thick, unmistakable bulge. The scent here is intensified, distilled to that dark salty smell that John can taste on the back of his tongue when he draws the air in through his nose. John cups the back of Sherlock’s ankles as he steps out of his shoes. John rolls his socks off and stands. Sherlock is nudging his mouth down to meet him, but John stays still, lets Sherlock close the distance.

Sherlock kisses him softly, timidly almost, coaxing John to open to him.

“Sir,” Sherlock pants, “please,” pleading.

“I’m going to give you relief, Sherlock,” John says, resisting his impulse to return Sherlock’s kiss. “But I’m not going to fuck you.” Sherlock whines, pouting prettily. John drops his voice. “I’m going to give you relief, right now, Sherlock, and then I’m going to take you back to the hotel room and I’m going to give you exactly what you want.”

Sherlock shifts on his feet, restless, his eyes swallowed by pupil.

“We just need to make a decision before I can do that.”

John can hear the exact moment when Sherlock stops breathing, holding the air inside his lungs as he waits for John to go on.

“I care about you, Sherlock. I know it’s only been a few days, but it would be deceitful of me to pretend I’m not falling for you. What this is between us, it happens sometimes in situations like ours. Not always, rarely even, but the truth is that sometimes it’s impossible to be this intimate with someone without deeper feelings also developing. I’m experiencing that with you.

“This situation with Moriarty is prompting me to tell you this earlier than it might have come out naturally. I would have liked more time with you for this to unfold at its own pace, but needs must. I care about you, Sherlock. And I want to stand by you through this. There is no need for you to reciprocate, however I do need you to accept that my affection and my protection are offered to you freely, without strings. I can see you telling yourself many stories about why I’ve offered you all of this in order to make it easier to accept it or, perhaps, decline it. I don’t want there to be any doubt.”

John doesn’t touch him. Doesn’t want to coerce him. He lets his confession be enough. It’s up to Sherlock now.

“If we do this, it’s likely you’ll be killed.” John can tell it’s meant to shock him out of whatever well-intentioned fog he’s in, but John only nods.

“I understand that.”

“How am I supposed to let you do this, knowing that?” Sherlock hisses.

“Because I am taking the same risk,” John says, tenderness welling inside him. “It would devastate me to lose you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock drops his head, his fringe brushing against John’s shoulder. John can feel Sherlock’s breath gusting hard and frustrated through his suit. With what feels like herculean effort John keeps his hands at his sides.

The words, when they’re finally spoken, are a terribly small vulnerable thing, “I accept.”

John’s body jerks involuntarily. A part of him had expected Sherlock to deny him. A much larger part than John had wanted to admit.

“You do?”

Sherlock raises his head, tear-sheened eyes meeting John's. He nods. “Yes.”

“There can be no more secrets between us, Sherlock. Do you understand why?”

“Our lives are at stake. I understand.”

John can’t contain himself any longer. The joy and fondness inside him are brimming against his skin. “Sherlock, can I kiss you?”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, just gives John his mouth. It is a seal of sorts, on their pledge to one another.

“I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, Sherlock. I promise you that.” The power behind his oath is ferocious. John is gripped with an overpowering, almost savage, loyalty to the man before him.

“I will do the same for you, John, I swear to God, if Moriarty harms you, I will tear him apart.”

There is a black violence edging the passion between them as their kisses turn more earnest, more urgent, trying to encompass everything they’ve just admitted to and the danger they’ve accepted into their future.

John tears at Sherlock’s belt.

“Oh, thank God, I thought—“

But John is kissing him again so Sherlock can’t get any further. John unzips him and pushes his trousers and pants down at once. As Sherlock straightens to step out of them John moves around behind him.

“Let me see,” John whispers, his blood pounding in his fingertips as he reaches for Sherlock’s sharp white hips.

Sherlock spreads his feet wider and bends at the waist, hands braced once more against the window pane. John watches as his cheeks part and there, nestled between them, is the matte black plug that John has inserted inside him that morning before they’d left for work.

It’s the biggest of the three that Sherlock had purchased on his way back to the hotel yesterday and had taken John slowly working him open with the other two before this one would fit. But if Sherlock is going to take John’s cock then he needs to properly prepared for it, and this one was just big enough to do the job. As John pulls gently at the base the widest part of the plug catches inside Sherlock’s body and resists.

“Ohhhhhhh,” Sherlock moans, rocking up onto his tiptoes.

John tugs, a little harder this time, and watches as Sherlock’s body stretches out around the thick black girth.

“You are absolutely fucking magnificent,” John breathes, in complete reverent worship of him.

Not only had Sherlock stopped by a sex shop on his way home to change his trousers yesterday but he’d also nipped into the waxing shop next door and had his arsehole stripped. The soft velvety skin rubbing against John’s mouth that morning had been exquisite. It’s still pink from where his beard had rubbed the skin a bit raw. A primal sort of pride fills John to see Sherlock marked by him.

John takes the bottle of almond oil (John detests the taste of lube) out of his pocket and sets to making Sherlock’s skin glisten. John rubs the oil over both round cheeks and up the seam that cleaves them. He reaches beneath Sherlock and wets his perineum and his fuzzy balls and then reaches up and wraps his hand around Sherlock’s cock. He gives it a few strokes, squeezing his fist around the crown and then running it down the hard shaft, before returning his slippery fingers to Sherlock’s swollen rose-pink hole. With one finger crooked over the base John pulls and the plug pops free, leaving Sherlock gaping, and John, diving forward, fits his tongue inside and runs it along the whole wide circumference. He does it, again and again, until Sherlock’s body is closing around him, the satiny channel inside clenching around him, the rim pulsing against his lips.

Sherlock is gasping above him, his entire body blotched red with an incredible sex flush, his toes curled into the carpet.

John licks him messy for a bit. Enjoying how much Sherlock loves this act, how he pushes back onto John’s tongue, the sounds he makes as he’s entirely lost to the pleasure suffusing him, how he begs and trembles. Soon though, John notices how Sherlock’s knees are buckling, how he’s struggling to hold himself up, and John, thankful for his foresight, works the plug back inside Sherlock’s body and then stumbles back into the chair he had dragged over and orders Sherlock to sit in his lap.

John arranges him so that he’s still facing the windows, his legs hooked over John’s knees, his back to John’s chest, his head cradled against John’s shoulder, sun drenched. His eyes are slitted, his nipples erect, his cock so stiff it looks like it might snap if John touched it.

But John does touch it. With Sherlock’s help he slicks his hand and he wraps it around Sherlock’s cock and feels his hammering pulse beating against his hand. With his other hand he urges Sherlock’s leg a little higher and he takes hold of the base of the plug.

Setting his lips to the tender silky lobe of Sherlock’s ear, John whispers, “Touch your nipples, Sherlock.”

Sherlock makes a high whinging sound and rolls his head against John’s shoulder as if he’s too far gone to manage this instruction.

“Get your fingers wet and touch your nipples, Sherlock.”

John begins to swivel the plug inside Sherlock, rubbing the pointed tip of it against Sherlock’s prostate. Sherlock groans and pushes down onto it, beads of milky pre-come welling in the slit of his cock. John sweeps his thumb through them, smearing them into the red velvety head. John runs his mouth down Sherlock’s throat a little, letting his beard drag over his skin, raising goosebumps. John returns to his ear. “Get your fingers wet.”

Sherlock grumbles a bit, but he does it. Spilling the oil onto his chest, he snaps the cap shut and tosses the bottle on the floor.

“Good boy,” John murmurs, running the edge of his teeth over the shell of his ear as Sherlock rubs the oil over his pecs and then begins to expertly pinch and roll the hard nubs between his fingers.

“John,” Sherlock says, opening his eyes and turning his head to look at John. The irises have been swallowed, but there is such naked unadulterated emotion laden there that it makes John ache to see it. “John, I’m…oh.” His eyes flutter shut as John works his cock in his hand and twists the plug, screwing it deeper. His eyes blink open a few moments later and he’s drunk on bliss, so beautiful it makes John’s chest hurt, “John,” he says, touching John’s cheek with fingers that are still slippery and fragrant with oil. “John, I’m falling for you too,” he whispers, repeating it twice as his body releases and he begins to come, tipping over into orgasm, his sweet words pressed to John’s lips as John leans down to taste them, to claim them.

“You’re not alone anymore,” John whispers to him, gathering him into his arms after, stroking his hair. “You’re not alone.”

Sherlock, head tucked beneath John's chin, curled into John's chest, says, with a sleepy, contented voice, that still stirs John intensely, "Take me to bed, John. I need to be with you. Please. I need you. Alone. Just us."

And so, thirty minutes later, as they step out into the midday heat, Sherlock's shoulders a little straighter, his burden now shared between them. John takes his hand and presses a kiss to the back of it as they wait to cross the street and it's as if they're in they're own private bubble, united and connected, their bond knitting them tighter together with each step they take into their uncertain future.

"Are you deigning to walk all the way back, sir?" Sherlock asks, ribbing him, his eyes iridescent and dazzling, his smile charming and unguarded. 

"If it means I get to hold your hand and see you basking in your sex high like a cat who got the cream, then yes, I suppose I do," John says, tugging Sherlock's hand as the light changes. Sherlock's laugh rumbles out behind him and John tucks the sound of it away mentally. Sherlock doesn't laugh much and with danger hurtling at them from unknown quarters John wants to save it to remember later: him, smiling, eyes crinkled, chins folded up, his hand warm in John's. 


	10. Chapter 10

Sherlock wakes to the somnolent blue hush of a summer storm. The hotel room is quiet but for the sough of rain against the window glass, the room dark around him.

When they’d arrived back at the hotel after a leisurely lunch John had bid him take out the plug and soak in the bath while he made some phone calls. Sherlock did as he was told and then, finding John still otherwise engaged, had laid down in bed to wait for him.

According to the clock that was two hours ago. The clock now reads 5pm.

Sherlock rolls over and takes stock.

He hasn’t slept so deeply in months. Years? He’d underestimated the relief he would feel at coming clean to someone else, how heavy it had been to carry it all, under imminent threat, for so long. John Watson continues to surprise him. Going into this Sherlock had expected a certain level of attachment. The physicality of their arrangement demanded it. What Sherlock hadn’t expected was to develop an emotional attachment. It was easy, he supposes, in the height of infatuation, when hormones ran rampage through your brain and body, to attribute more importance to a relationship than it actually warranted. Rose hued glasses and all that. He is aware that this is a thing people do. But he is not people, nor does he want to be blinded to reality because John makes him feel a certain way.

It has made a tumultuous mess of his thoughts. What does he trust? Does he trust his impulse to put his faith in John? To lean on him? To join with him in this struggle even though John has no vested interest in doing so? Suppose he was to do as John suggested and they faced M together? What if John eventually decided that the stakes were too high and deserted Sherlock or betrayed him? Or, on the flip side, what if John did follow through and was used against Sherlock? Or was harmed in the execution of whatever plan they came up with?

It undoubtably makes things more complicated.

And yet.

And yet, when Sherlock truly plumbs his instincts, on which he has relied for his entire life, they are all telling him to trust John.

Sherlock sighs.

Bugger.

The weakness inherent in this type of relationship makes him nauseous.

He swallows it down and pads out into the sitting room, seeking reassurance that he hasn’t completely lost his mind.

John is standing in front of the windows that face Central Park. The trees gleam lushly beneath the pearly streaks of rain, a rippling viridian sea. The back of John’s shirt is chilled from the air conditioner when Sherlock wraps his arms around him from behind. His skin prickles up, the hair on his arms and legs standing on end.

“Hello,” Sherlock murmurs as John sinks his weight back into him, letting his head rest against Sherlock’s shoulder, eyes closed. “Why didn’t you come join me?”

“You looked so peaceful,” John says, “I didn’t want to disturb you.” He looks tired in the pale blue light. There are shadows beneath his eyes and his lips are slightly chapped from where he has been licking them. It’s a habit of his, Sherlock knows, when he is aroused, or agitated, or worried.

“How did the calls go?”

“I have an old army friend, Bill. He’s in private security now, bodyguards, that type of thing. He’ll have someone meet us at the airport when we land tomorrow.”

Sherlock tucks his face into John’s throat and kisses the soft skin just below his beard line.

“What else?”

John’s hands, which are resting on top of Sherlock’s, clench reflexively. The tension runs through him like a cord pulling taut.

“I have people looking into it. Is there anything you can tell me that might give them a place to start?”

“Nothing I haven’t already given to Lestrade. All of the addresses where I lived with him have been leased under falsified identities. M is meticulous. He leaves no trace.”

“Well, Lestrade is constrained by the law. Are there, perhaps, less legal routes we might pursue on our own?”

Sherlock pulls away, unwinding his arms from around John, and takes a step back. “I think this is a good place to stop and talk about the magnitude of what you just suggested.” 

John turns around and studies him for a moment before warily agreeing. “All right.”

Sherlock walks to the sofa and sits, curling his legs beneath him. He’s still naked and covered in goosebumps as the air kicks on again and begins to blow a cool stream over him.

John disappears for a moment. Sherlock hears the beep of the temperature being adjusted and then he’s back with a bathrobe that he drapes over Sherlock’s shoulders before he sits down at the other end of the sofa, leaving literal and figurative space between them for the conversation they’re about to have.

Sherlock threads his arms through the arm holes and pulls the robe closed around him. He knows where he needs to begin. He doesn’t want to necessarily, but he wants to see the reaction the accusation provokes from John.

“I know an addict when I see one,” Sherlock says slowly, watching John’s face closely. “And I think that before we agree to anything we need to have all of our cards on the table. I am addicted to mind altering experiences that force my brain to shut off. Cocaine and sex, to name the top two. I think, John, that you are addicted to danger.”

John doesn’t flinch. He is completely composed when he inclines his head. “I think it’s safe to say that that is absolutely true.”

Sherlock is silent. It seems to cost him nothing to admit this.

John spreads his hands. “I went to war to chase it. And when I got shot and couldn’t seek it that way, I became a gambler. I lost a sizeable chunk of my inheritance playing at high stakes online poker. And when my family cut off my money and told me I had to work for the funds I wanted to piss away, I sought out relationships predicated on high-octane sex. Particularly, public sex where the chance of being caught is almost a constant.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence Sherlock, that you and I are here right now?”

Sherlock hasn’t even the wherewithal to shake his head.

“You chose me because I could give you what you needed most: security and sex. And I chose you because, even though I didn’t know the extent of it at the time, I could sense that you weren’t like anyone else I had ever met before. Your secrets enticed me to no end. I crave adrenaline, it’s true, and you gave it to me in staggering amounts.”

John’s words leave Sherlock cold to his core. He feels numb with shock.

“So I’ve just been a means to an end this entire time,” he says flatly, absorbing the gut punch of this realisation.

“And haven’t I been the same for you?”

Sherlock can concede this. It’s true. Or, it was. His throat throbs at the contradiction. He nods his head heavily.

“I didn’t expect it to lead to this. I have always been extremely careful that the boundaries are clearly drawn and respected.”

Sherlock looks up at him. His brow is knit and he looks bemused.

“You challenge me and confound me, Sherlock—“

“I confound you!” Sherlock exclaims, because this man, THIS MAN dares to—

John chuckles, sliding towards him. “Marvellous boy, can you honestly tell me that you think all I’m in this for is the thrill?”

Sherlock blinks at him. The rip tide change in emotion tugs him in either direction, shifting the ground he stands on so that he feels unsteady.

John’s close now, braced right in front of Sherlock, his dark eyes brimming with tenderness.

“Sherlock, we can’t go into this doubting one another. I need you to trust that I am in this wholly and without reservation. I accept the risk. I refuse to let you face this alone. Can you do the same?”

“It makes us vulnerable—“

“I disagree. It makes us stronger.”

“But—“

“We can spend all night coming up with worst case scenarios. Fear will tell us any number of things in an attempt to keep us ‘safe’. But this man is dangerous. To you. To me. To the world. If we don’t do something, if we don’t act now, who knows what suffering he will wreak. Together we stand a chance. If he can pit us against each other, if he can exploit any mistrust he senses between us, he will win. We go into this united.”

The conviction, the passion that John speaks with, it’s like a candle within him. He burns before Sherlock, incandescent. It makes Sherlock’s heart pound and his whole body come alive.

How can Sherlock knowingly put this man at risk?

“What are you saying to yourself right now, Sherlock?”

Sherlock shakes his head, wanting to evade the directness of this question.

“Please?”

“Before, I could have used you,” Sherlock says, “I would have used you. Like a tool to my advantage. I needed you to want me so that I could exploit you, for money, for protection, as a pawn. You’re rich and powerful and there’s nothing M likes more than those two things. I would have taken you down to catch him. I would have sacrificed everything you had.”

“And now?”

“Now I can’t do that.”

“And why not?”

“Why are you being like this?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Because you’re important to me, ok? I don’t want to see you destroyed just to take him down.”

John closes the remaining distance between them and covers Sherlock’s hand with both of his own.

“Do you know why I’m here, in New York, Sherlock?”

“You’re trying to create a bidding war for Watson Tech.”

John chuckles. “Very good. I don’t know why I thought any of that had slipped by you.”

“I’m not a moron, John. You’ve been looking to sell for the past year. With Novarsky interested you can play their deal off against Qwest back in London.”

“Exactly.” John pauses. Runs his tongue over his lips. “I don’t want to do this work anymore. I’m not my father.”

“Irene’s offer is hard to turn down. Do you think Justin West will be able to meet it?”

“No, I don’t. Qwest doesn’t have the capital that Novarsky does. But, there’s something about this deal that’s making me uneasy.”

“What?”

“It’s too perfect.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, all of that is beside the point. The point is that I think you should use me. Use my wealth and my position. Make M jealous, make him expose himself.”

“M doesn’t make mistakes.”

“I think you might be a sore spot for him, Sherlock. For you, I think he might.”

“I think you’re vastly overestimating what I was to him. To him I was nothing more than a pet.”

John cocks his head at Sherlock, his eyebrows raised. “A man who moves through this world like a ghost with no ties, but he trusted you enough to have intimate knowledge of his associates and their actions? I think you’re underestimating just how much you meant to him.”

Sherlock can just imagine Moriarty’s reaction if he were to hear this conversation right now. Bitterness sears him.

“He doesn’t like to lose. Even a pet that runs away must be taught a lesson. Especially a pet who knows as much as I do. He will come for me and when he does he will burn everything I care about to the ground. He has promised me that much.”

John’s voice is shocked and hoarse when he says, “Christ, you must feel like you’re all alone in this world.”

“Alone protects me. It protects my family. It protects you.”

“Darling boy, you’re not alone anymore. Can’t you see? I don’t want you to protect me, I want you to be my partner. My equal. I want it to be us, Sherlock, us against the rest of the world.” John’s hand slides against Sherlock’s cheek and into his hair, rifling softly through his curls.

“You’re mad, you know that?” Sherlock says, leaning into his touch, helpless.

“So are you,” John says, a half smile curving up one cheek. “Our madnesses match, I think.”

“We probably won’t survive this.”

“Then it will have been an honour to face it together.”

Sherlock chokes on the raw air, reaching for him, “John—“

It is the softest kiss of Sherlock’s life and it completely and utterly destroys him. Shatters and levels him, remakes him. There is the man he was before this moment, alone, and there is the man he is now. All of his armour is stripped away, he is utterly vulnerable, he is taking the biggest risk of his life and yet he has never felt more secure. Whatever comes they’ll face it together. Whatever comes they’ll meet it united. And if the worst was to happen they will die knowing they did everything they could.

What the hell has John Watson done to him?

“What are you thinking?” John asks fondly, stroking Sherlock’s cheek and searching his eyes. “What’s going on in that big, beautiful brain?”

“You’re making me change something about myself that I thought was fundamental.”

“I’m ‘making’ you?”

“Poor choice of word. I mean, you’re forcing me to reevaluate the way I’ve viewed the world and the way I’ve come to see myself in it. It feels like you’re cracking bedrock here, my identity.”

“Tell me more.”

“I just want you to recognise the gravity of what you’re asking me to do. This, trusting you, letting you in, it goes against everything I know about humanity.”

“I don’t take any of this lightly, Sherlock. I know it must feel like you’re in free fall right now.”

Sherlock nods, grateful to have it acknowledged. “A bit.”

“What can I do to make it feel better?”

“Ground me. I need you to tell me what comes next. How we’re going to do this. What it looks like. I don’t—“

“Ok, all right. Breathe.” John slides forward, pulling Sherlock’s legs across his lap so that Sherlock’s knees are tented over his thighs. He leans in until their foreheads rest against each other, one arm sliding behind Sherlock to touch his back. “I think what you’re hoping I can give you is certainty, and Sherlock, if I could I would, but life is inherently uncertain. I don’t know what will happen. I can’t tell you it will work out. All I can do is ask myself what is right? And the answer to that, right now, in this moment, with the information we have now, is to stand by you. Will you let me?”

Sherlock breathes out the only answer he has, “Yes.”

“Thank you. Thank you for taking this risk on us. It has to feel terrifying and overwhelming and strange. If it helps, tomorrow after our morning meeting we’ll fly home. We can work on what our next steps will be then. We’ll need to coordinate with DI Lestrade once we’re back in London and Bill might have some useful information by then as well. Does that make sense to you? Anything you want to add? You know Moriarty and how he works best.”

Sherlock huffs a sardonic laugh. “I only wish that were true.”

Just then there’s a knock at the hotel room door.

John nuzzles Sherlock’s cheek and kisses him quickly on the mouth. “Don’t despair just yet, there’s hope still. Those are the tuxes. Budge up, hm?” Sherlock swings his legs off John’s lap and John goes to the door to collect their suits fresh from the dry-cleaners.

John leans into the doorway after he’s hung up the tuxes in the bedroom closet. His eyebrows are tugged low over his dark eyes, moving over Sherlock as if in triage. “You know, you don’t have to come with me tonight. You could stay here if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“No, I’ll go. What time do we need to be there?”

John checks his phone and winces. “In about an hour. I’m afraid we’ll need to hurry. You want first shower or…?”

Sherlock, still feeling unsteady, feeling wound up and exposed and jittery, grins, he hopes, convincingly. “I think I have a better idea.”

 

**********

 

“So, you’re a gambler,” Sherlock says, his cold, clammy skin stinging as the hot water sprays down on him. Facing away from John. Eyes to the tile. The carefree persona he is trying hard to embody unraveling even as he is desperately clutching it around him.

“Inveterate, I’m afraid,” John murmurs from behind him.

Sherlock feels like a gong has sounded off inside him, his skin is ringing with it, his teeth on edge. He tries to focus on what to say next, but his thoughts have taken on a diffuse quality; they deliquesce, like the steam rising around them. He’s lost control, everything he had expected, everything he had planned, it’s gone. John’s right, he is in free fall, and Sherlock has no idea, zero, where he’s supposed to go from here. No contingency he had ever even imagined had involved anyone but him.

Moriarty is going to make mince meat of them.

Sherlock is certain of it. In fact, it is the only thing he is certain of.

And not only that, but this thing between him and John is so different…the two things at once are swamping him. He’s never felt this genuinely, sincerely desired before. His well-fare has always been a part of the dynamic, but more as a show of power: his Don’s ability to care for him, pamper him, spoil him as a signifier of wealth. It’s never been like this. Never felt reciprocated to the point where he could fuck his Don and there not be a transfer of power. This relationship was re-writing the book on what submission could look like for Sherlock. But he had little to no time to process it or ask himself what it was he really wanted. It had always been easier just to be told.

He can’t do this, he realises. He can’t do both right now. He can’t afford to be in free fall.

“Sherlock, breathe.” John’s hands: his ribs. Sherlock’s teeth chatter, his heart rattling in his ears, air trapped, scalding his lungs. “Darling, you need to breathe. Breathe for me, Sherlock.”

“Ground me. I need you to turn me off, please, John, I—“

“Shh, ok, ok.”

John seems to understand, in that preternatural way he always does, exactly what Sherlock needs. He turns the water off and they dry their bodies quickly. Sherlock hangs them and find John climbing onto the bed, lying back against the pillows and spreading his knees wide as Sherlock slowly approaches him.

“Sherlock, come here,” John says, softly, his eyes so dark and full emotion. His hands run down the insides of his thighs and Sherlock watches as John’s cock, lying soft along the crease where his leg meets his hip, slowly begins fill. “I want you inside me. Now.”

Sherlock kneels on the bed as John fishes with one hand for the bottle of lube on the nightstand and then they are kissing, desperate and hard, John bowed up to meet him, one hand on Sherlock’s waist.

Sherlock’s hands are shaking too hard, he fumbles with the lid, curses. John turns them, Sherlock sitting up against the headboard with John straddling his thighs and his slippery wet fingers between his legs, pumping. From a distance Sherlock can feel the lube drip drop onto the tops of his legs; he doesn’t truly feel anything, all of him thick and numb and slipping towards that space where he can experience oblivion, until John is fully seated, and is saying to him as through a wall of glass: “Sherlock, don’t turn off, stay with me.”

It’s excruciating.

But he does it.

He opens his eyes.

Pulls back from the brink and gasps.

Gasps.

Breathes the cold air and feels it on his skin, fully feels John’s body gripping him tight, John’s hands on Sherlock’s shoulders, his lips on Sherlock’s lips.

And instead of safely burying all the pain, the fear, the panic, the doubt, Sherlock feels it rush through him, a savage, tearing, roaring flood, and out.

John is below him, legs wrapped around Sherlock’s neck.

John is above him, his powerful thighs raising him up and down.

John is beneath him, on hands and knees.

John is beneath him, legs spread wide, pinned to the bed by Sherlock’s hands.

John is beneath him, John is above him, John is surrounding him, John is holding, John is holding, and holding, and holding firm, even as Sherlock breaks over him, even as Sherlock batters him, surging against him, his body a storm raging over him, as if searching for the end of him, all of him searching out any crack, anything that could prove that John isn’t what he says he is because, because Sherlock surely isn’t worth this risk, is he?

Is he?

“There you are,” John says, cupping his cheeks, his knees dug into Sherlock’s ribs, his eyes blue and searching Sherlock’s. “There you are, my beautiful boy. I see you.”

There are tears on John’s cheeks, which Sherlock only slowly comes to realise are his own. He scrubs his fist over them, but John only pulls him down and kisses them as they fall.

“Well?” John says, after a bit. After Sherlock has slipped out of him, flaccid, unspent, after he has curled up next to John, wrapped himself all around him, his ear pressed to John’s heart. “Any better?”

Sherlock props his head up, chin resting in the divot of John’s sternum, looking up into the deep blue of his eyes and finding, once more, no end to him. No cracks, just John.

“I trust you,” Sherlock says, sure now, of maybe only this, choosing this, this one simple thing. It feels paltry, it feels infinitesimal, compared to what John is giving him, but it makes John’s mouth go crooked, in a disbelieving sort of smile, a grateful sort of smile, a purely happy smile.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard something so wonderful in my whole life,” John says, voice choked, his eyes gleaming so bright, that Sherlock has to look away, has to lay his head back down on John’s chest, not knowing what his face would give away if he didn’t. “Thank you, Sherlock.” John’s hands: his hair, his back, the shell of his ear, the nape of his neck.

Gentle, but holding.

Holding Sherlock firmly in place. No running. No hiding.

Grounded.


End file.
